Our Monday gender issue:
While approximately 85% of us celebrate Mother’s Day, for Father’s Day, maybe 78%. Then, the numbers diminish after we reach 44 years old. And, by the time we are 65, there are only 60% (or so) of us that participate in each holiday’s gift-giving.
Ok, so where are we going here? Holiday spending.
And that started me thinking about how Mother’s Day and Father’s Day spending compare. As you might expect, Mom gets more. But between 2007 and 2012, the gap narrowed. For 2013 though, with average spending on Mom $168.94 and Dad, $119.84 (projected), the difference returned to 40%.
The National Retail Federation has other specific stats on how we spend. Yes, Mom gets a lot of flowers, greeting cards and brunches or dinners:
For Father’s Day (2013), it was also more likely that we gave Dad a card and a special outing:
And finally, how do Mother’s and Father’s Day stack up against other holidays?
So what is our bottom line? With consumer spending at 70% of the GDP, holidays help economic growth. Let us know in the comments: How did you manage your Mother’s Day spending? Will we close the gap again this year (maybe get Dad some new golf clubs)?
Sources and Resources: My WSJ graph was from a 2012 article while I created the NRF graphs from their statistics where you can find other interesting facts about how we spend. (Please note that the NRF appeared only to have projected stats for Father’s Day, 2013.)
Do we spend more on Mother's Day or Father's Day?
Elaine Schwartz
Elaine Schwartz has spent her career sharing the interesting side of economics. At the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she has been honored through an Endowed Chair in Economics and the History Department chairmanship. At the same time, she developed curricula and wrote several books including Understanding Our Economy (originally published by Addison Wesley as Economics Our American Economy) and Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). Elaine has also written in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press) and was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom.” Beyond the classroom, she has presented Econ 101 ½ talks and led workshops for the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the National Council on Economic Education and for the Concord Coalition.
