Hard at Play! The Growth of Recreation in Consumer Budgets, 1959-1998

Recreation is the fastest growing segment of personal consumption. The study documents this growth, first, by analyzing recreation expenditures as a part of total personal consumption, and second, by analyzing the growth of expenditures on six recreation sub-groups, including electronic products, printed products, sporting goods, gambling, and live entertainment events. Using NIPA data, I report empirical estimates for income and price elasticities for ten commodities, including recreation. Conditional elasticities also are obtained for each of the six recreation sub-groups. Application of the results include construction of a consumption quality index as a summary measure of increased living standards.