The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a fascinating new report out that compares consumer budgets in the United States, Canada, Britain and Japan. There’s a huge amount of variation: Americans appear to spend more than their peers on housing, transportation, and health care – and we spend far less on clothes, food, and booze.

At this point, it shouldn’t come as a shock that American consumers devote a far bigger fraction of their budgets to health care than their peers abroad. That’s partly because Canada, Japan, and Britain all have more comprehensive taxpayer-financed nationalized health systems that curtail out-of-pocket expenses. (Though, as Catherine Rampell points out, when you add up both taxes and out-of-pocket expenses, the United States is still paying significantly more for health care than other countries.)

Also noteworthy is the fact that Americans spend a much bigger chunks of their budgets on housing, and far less on food. As the BLS report’s detailed breakdown here shows, Americans spend more money eating out than their peers, but they spend a significantly smaller portion of their budgets on cooking at home than Canada, Britain, or Japan. Here’s an old article by Derek Thompson looking at why food in the United States […]