Characteristics of Top Spending Households Population
September 6,
2019 by Laurie Northington in General 
A snapshot of today’s top-spending furniture consumers looks to be high-earning married couples, in their late 30s and early 40s with young children, living in urban areas. Using data from the 2017 Consumer Expenditure Survey, this is the fourth factoid in a series of four factoids delving into key household characteristics – age, income, marriage/children status, occupation, population, and region.
Urban Population
Where people live also influences how much they spend on furniture each year. Larger cities seem to command the higher salaries, but also higher costs of living. Households in America’s mega markets with over 5 million in population, do not, in fact, spend the most on furniture. Bigger cities, but not the largest urban areas, with populations between 2.5 million and 5 million – had the highest annual furniture expenditures at $669 in 2017.
Although the larger, densely populated areas spend more per household, the greatest share of total furniture purchases, 21.7 percent, are from households living in mid-sized urban areas with a population of 250,000 to 999,999.
Source: Consumer Expenditure Survey 2017, Bureau of Labor Statistics, which in 2017 calculated at a ratio of .63 versus Personal Consumption Expenditures published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (see methodology box below “ Methodology: The CE versus the PCE”