Read the Room
Money
What percentage of American adults found it somewhat or very difficult to pay their usual household expenses in the last two months?
21.3% of American adults found it somewhat or very difficult to pay their usual household expenses in the last two months - about 21 in every 100, or 2 in 10. That is the figure published by the Household Pulse Survey for 2026.
0 in 100100 in 100
21.3
Where this number comes from
- Survey
- Household Pulse Survey
- What it measured
- HTOPS HPS 2607 (collected July 15 – August 3, 2026), item EXPENSE_DIFFICULT (“In the LAST 2 MONTHS, how difficult has it been for your household to pay for usual household expenses, including but not limited to food, rent or mortgage, car payments, medical expenses, student loans, and so on?”), counting responses 3=Somewhat difficult, 4=Very difficult, as a share of adults who answered (6.1% did not). Computed from the Census Bureau's public-use microdata with the person weight PWEIGHT; the standard error uses its 80 successive-difference replicate weights (4/80 · Σ of squared deviations). The counts and standard errors behind it reproduce the published table spending1. Census labels these estimates experimental; unweighted n = 12,088.
- Population
- U.S. adults aged 18 and over
- Year
- 2026
- 95% confidence interval
- 18.79% to 23.81% (derived from the published standard error)
Work of the U.S. federal government - public domain. See the source data
Related questions
Now guess five of these cold.
No account, nothing to install, and you can play right now.