Why Americans Feel Poor

The Pew survey asked the "Luxury or Necessity?" question about 14 different consumer products designed to help make everyday life more productive, more convenient, more comfortable, more efficient or more entertaining. It was conducted by telephone from October 18 through November 9, 2006 among a randomly-selected nationally-representative sample of 2,000 adults.

Survey respondents placed the 14 items on a very broad range along the "necessity" scale -- with a high of 91% describing a car as a necessity and a low of 3% saying the same about an iPod.

FigureBut one pattern was consistent: wherever there has been a significant change in the past decade in the public's judgment about these items, it's always been in the direction of necessity. And on those items for which there are longer term survey trends dating back to 1973, this march toward necessity has tended to accelerate in the past ten years.

The two most ubiquitous products of the information era - home computers and cell phones - are currently situated in the middle of the pack, with the public evenly divided about their status. Computers are deemed a necessity by 51% of the adult public, and cell phones by 49%.

But both of these products are making a swift climb up the necessity scale. A decade ago, just 26% of adults considered the home computer a necessity, and back in 1983, when computers were still a novelty, just 4% felt that way. Meantime, cell phones were still so exotic in 1996 that they weren't even placed on the survey. The same holds for high-speed internet access; it didn't exist as a consumer service in 1996, but it's now considered a necessity by 29% of the adult public.

Why Do Americans Feel Poor? They're spending too much damned money!