Everything has a price, so how much do Americans spend on the spookiest day of the year? Since 2005, the National Retail Federation has conducted a Halloween Consumer Spending Survey to gauge consumer behavior and shopping trends related to Halloween spending. Overall, 162 million people are expected to celebrate Halloween in 2014, spending $7.4 billion in some way to celebrate the holiday.
The Institute for Justice gave us something scary and spooky for Halloween. Take a look at this simple bar chart they made about money in politics and campaign spending.
So how do people spend their money on Halloween? The most popular ways people will participate in the holiday is by handing out candy, followed by decorating their homes or yards, dressing in costumes, or carving pumpkins. When it comes to costumes, there is no telling what will knock on your door tonight, but keep in mind most of those costumes were purchased somewhere. Shoppers are expected to spend $2.8 billion on Halloween costumes, $1.4 billion on adult costumes and $1.1 billion on children’s costumes. And of course the four-legged members of the family haven’t been forgotten when it comes to costumes — 23 million people will dress their pets in costumes, spending $350 million.
