"About 2% of the total went to alcohol, cigarettes and drug expenses — the largest portion of which was cigarettes"
I'm pretty sure that the average American spends more than 2% of their income on drugs.
I'm pretty sure that the average American spends more than 2% of their income on drugs.
> > Oh uhhh... like $15.
> Okay, thanks. I am writing that down in my report. Now it is a fact.
However it might be interesting as a control is to give some random non-homeless people $750 to see how they spend their money.
I think it's close, but unlikely?
The top X% of drinkers drink orders of magnitude more than the average. They skew the average much, much higher than what people think of as how much the "average person" drinks.
According to this news article [1], the "average person" drinks (73.85 + 15.28 + 6.25 + 2.17 + 0.63 + 0.14 + 0.02) / 10 = 9.834 drinks per week!
But the fifth decile (the middle of the distribution) drinks only 0.14 drinks per week --- less than one per month!
I appreciate your analysis but I think the average is too lossy of a statistic to make a good argument here.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...
if you have $50 and it wont make a difference in getting what you actually need, then fast food and fast thrills are what it will be spent on
if you have $750 or some other threshold, you can try to make a difference to get out of it
its like “give a man a fish” versus “sign up for fishing classes, get books, equipment and train so you’ll never have to be in the situation ever again”
For the recreational stuff, I'd rather make/grow my own, so in one sense they're free, but in the actual sense, they're probably quite expensive once you factor in the equipment; just like any other hobby I suppose. Hell, keeping hives to get honey to make into mead is quite the long way around.
Do you think the average American would self-report more?
If you ask someone how much they smoke per day, (that's pretty consistent) and they respond "2 packs of X brand", then you know the brand, you know the price x365 you can estimate the cost. If you point blank ask me "how much do you spend on pizzas every year", I can't just pull a number out of a hat. I will do the math: €20 per pizza x 1 per month = approx 240.
Esp here. “Hey; want to be part of a study where we give you free money to see if it helps you out?”… “Ok, now how much of that money did you use on things that were harmful to you?” You could perform that study with anyone and you’re going to get BS answers and estimations.
"Hey we gave $750/ month to these homeless guys- yes the ones dressed in those brown rags and with that strange haircut- they were so thankful."