The effect of ethnicity on selected household expenditures

A subsample of expenditure data, collected from 3,481 households as part of the 1980–1981 Consumer Expenditure Survey, was used to analyze the effect of ethnicity on expenditures for clothing, food at home, and food away from home. Previous research has been criticized for failing to control for the effects of income and other socioeconomic and demographic variables on the behavior of ethnic consumers. The results of a multiple regression analysis in which the effects of those variables were controlled demonstrated that Hispanics spend more than other households on food at home, while Afro-Americans spend more on clothing and less on food away from home.