Conclusions and Implications
To identify factors associated with teen spending
behavior and to map the teen consumption and saving
pattern, this study examined the effects of several
characteristics pertaining to teens and their families.
Several factors revealed statistically significant
relationships to the four categories of spending. Most of
the findings seem to be consistent and plausible. For
example, the suggestion that teens allocate less money
for food and snacks as they grow older could be
explained by their growing needs for other consumer
products such as clothing and personal care and
entertainment. In fact, a look at the age variable across
the second and third equations (Table 2) would confirm
the age effect in increasing the expenditures on clothing
and personal care and entertainment. It seems that as
they grow older, teens appreciate entertainment items
more than they do for clothing and personal care items.
The suggestion that boys spend less than girls on clothing
and personal care could be explained by the wellestablished
socioeconomic and cultural norm which
offers girls a wider variety of clothing and personal care
products such as apparel, jewelry, make-up, and hair
supplies and accessories. Further, girls found to be more
likely to save than boys. This could be interpreted that
girls may have developed a higher level of responsibility
related to the use of money since they have been found to
handle family purchases more often than boys (Stipp
1988).
The finding that teenagers who have jobs spend
significantly more on food than those who do not have
jobs could be explained by the fact that they had to spend
more time out of their homes to meet the job
requirements. It was interesting to find that teenagers
who get an allowance may spend less on food and
clothing than those who do not get an allowance which
may sounds contradictory. It may, however, be
interpreted that teenagers who do not receive an
allowance may tend to exhibit a certain level of
independence in their behavior especially when their
spending priorities are concerned. The finding of the
negative effect of Respondent's income on food, and its
positive effect on both clothing and entertainment could
be seen as an indication that teenagers' food and snacks
represent an inferior good to clothing and entertainment
which were considered normal goods. The finding of the
teens' perception of own spending may suggest that those
teenagers who consider themselves generally spending
too little are willing to spend more on entertainment, and
therefore, appreciate it more than those who consider
themselves generally spending too much. Family size
was the only significant variable among all family
characteristics to affect food expenditures. This could be
explained that being in a larger size family may lower the
per capita share of food and snacks, and therefore, raise
the individual motivation to eat out or to share some of
the household costs of food by using personal money to
buy additional food for the family. The finding that
suggests teenagers of non-married mothers may save
more than those of married mothers could be explained
that those teenagers may attempt to lessen the financial
burden on their mothers, and it could reflect the
increasing motivation of those mothers to enforce their
kids discipline because those mothers are most likely to
be the major, and probably the sole responsible adult in
the household.