The bar chart below shows shares of expenditures for five major categories in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan in the year 2009.

The bar chart illustrates of four countries (US, UK, Canada and Japan) spent on five different consumer goods namely; food, housing, transportation, health care and clothing in 2009. The units are measured in a percentage.

In 2009, the categories with the highest countries’ expenditures were food, housing and transportation. This figure is fluctuated between 10% and 25% of shares of expenditures. Overall, the highest spending was on housing, especially in US with just over 25% of share, followed by UK (of around 24%) whereas most of Japanese expenditure spent on food (of well over 20% of share) and housing (just below 25% of share). In comparison, the least amount spent was on health care and clothing. The lowest spending was British people with just around 1% of share in a projected period.

The categories with the least amount of spending for all four countries were health care and clothing, which figures were well below 10%. In that given period, health care in US was around 7% of shares of expenditure, Canada and Japan were at below 5% of shares of expenditure. Whereas Canada and UK showed the similar percentage of expenditures has spent on clothing (of over 5%) and the remaining countries reached at below 5%.

Interestingly, the countries with the highest shares of expenditure on food were Japan (with well over 22%) and followed by UK with 20% of shares. While Canada and US spent only around 15% of shares of expenditure on food.

In Canada, almost similar shares of expenditure has spent on transportation and housing (of around 20%) in 2009. Whereas only around 15% of shares of expenditure on transport for other countries except for Japan (of only 10% spent for transportation).