I don’t recall when my parents handed me my first allowance (it was so long ago, there may have been buffalo nickels involved) but with our daughters seemingly at the right ages (one’s a third-grader, the other a kindergartner) to begin drawing a weekly stipend, my wife and I figured the start of the school year last fall was a good time to start paying out.
I think we checked with a few friends and maybe posted a question on Facebook to see what other parents have opted for, amount-wise. We settled on what seemed like a reasonable sum and told the girls of their impending paydays. They were naturally excited.
Fast-forward to January, when one day I suddenly realized I hadn’t paid them a single weekly outlay in four months.
We had talked about it fairly often but I just never got around to doling their allowances out. To their credit, they had been gentle in their reminders and were very happy to receive the back-allowance in the form of a nice chunk of cash.
Maybe it wasn’t so nice after all. According to the results of a Harris Poll from December, our kids have cheapskate parents, as we’re way on the low end of the spectrum (though, looking at the data, I’m not too far out of line with my Baby Boomer cohorts):
When asked what they feel is an appropriate weekly allowance for children in three different age groups (4-9, 10-13 and 14-17), respondents indicated that appropriate allowance levels grow as children age (from $4.10 to $8.70 to $16.00, respectively), roughly doubling with each progression from one age category to the next.
The data show some distinct shifts between how different groups of Americans perceive what constitutes an appropriate allowance. For all three age categories, Echo Boomers (Americans ages 18-36) and Gen Xers (ages 37-48) are more generous in their assessments than their elders; Baby Boomers (ages 49-67), in turn, report higher appropriate allowance levels than Matures (ages 68+):
– For 4-9-year-olds – $5.10 Echo Boomers, $5.40 Gen Xers, $3.10 Baby Boomers, $2.00 Matures.
– For 10-13-year-olds – $10.60, $10.10, $7.30 and $5.40, respectively.
– For 14-17-year-olds – $18.00, $18.80, $14.00 and $11.60, respectively.
Men consistently are looser with the purse strings than women:
– For 4-9-year-olds – $4.70 men, $3.50 women.
– For 10-13-year-olds – $9.90 men, $7.60 women.
– For 14-17-year-olds – $17.90 men, $14.20 women.
Republicans may not live up to the “Party of ‘No!’” title their political rivals have been pushing, but they do have lower “appropriate” allowance thresholds than Democrats for 10-17-year-olds:
– For 10-13-year-olds – $7.60 Republicans, $9.50 Democrats, $8.70 Independents.
– For 14-17-year-olds – $14.10 Republicans, $17.50 Democrats, $16.00 Independents.
Some corporations take the local cost of living into account when deciding on their employees’ compensation and it would appear that allowances can be subject to this line of thinking as well. Urban Americans project a higher “appropriate” allowance than their Rural counterparts and a higher rate than either Suburbanites or Rurals for 10-17-year-olds, in keeping with those regions’ respective costs of living:
– For 4-9-year-olds – $4.30 Urban, $4.30 Suburban, $3.30 Rural.
– For 10-13-year-olds – $10.00 Urban, $8.60 Suburban, $7.40 Rural.
– For 14-17-year-olds – $18.30 Urban, $15.70 Suburban, $14.00 Rural.
Interestingly, Americans’ household income, of all things, shows little relationship with what they believe allowance levels should be.
Though Americans overall appear to see allowances as appropriate across age ranges, that’s not to say they think kids should be given money for nothing. While nine in 10 believe an allowance is an important way for a child to learn about money, the same percentage (90 percent) feel that if a teenager wants to make money, he or she should get a job, and nearly as many (86 percent) say that children should only get an allowance when they work for it (doing household chores, for example).
Additionally, nearly three-fourths each believe that bad behavior should be taken out of a child’s allowance in some way (74 percent) and that children shouldn’t expect to get paid just for helping around the house (73 percent). This last sentiment, that helping out around the house is not, in and of itself, worthy of compensation, is especially strong among Baby Boomers and Matures (68 percent Echo Boomers, 69 percent Gen Xers, 77 percent Baby Boomers, 81 percent Matures).
Since their dad is the editor of a marketing research magazine, I’m always extolling the merits and value of MR data to our girls. Looking at the dollar amounts bandied about in the Harris findings, I better hope they never see this blog post. I can already hear their rejoinder: “The numbers don’t lie, dad. We want a raise!”
Results are taken from a Harris Poll of 2,311 adults surveyed online between December 11 and 17, 2013 by Harris Interactive.