Adult clothing expenditures in 2006 and 2010: homeowners and renters before and after the Great Recession

While extensive research on U.S. clothing expenditures in past economic cycles has occurred, currently researchers know little about clothing expenditures around the recent Great Recession and even less about the relationship between housing tenure and clothing expenditures. Copious studies using the Consumer Expenditure Survey data have used demographic and socio-economic factors (age, gender, race, geographic location/region, urban/rural housing, income, consumer unit composition, parental education, and parental occupation) to measure business cycle variation and clothing expenditures Likewise, this study used the Consumer Expenditure Survey and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to answer the question Were household clothing expenditures in the spring of 2006 and the spring of 2010 different? If so, what household characteristics are associated with those differences? The findings implied that housing tenure was insignificant in relation to clothing expenditures. However, once adjusted for inflation, year was highly significant in relation to clothing expenditures.