Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - US
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February 28, 2008
2008 Tax Rebate Appeals to Lower and Middle Income Groups
Last week, the search term "2008 tax rebate" was among the fast moving search terms based on volume of searches. Not a big surprise. What I found interesting was that I could use this bit of data to try to figure out what segment of America is most excited about the tax rebate.
My theory is that if middle and lower income groups are the ones searching for information on the rebate, it would indicate that the rebate might have the desired effect - to pump some cash into the economy. We know that more money going to the wealthiest segments of the population isn't going to make a difference. These groups by and large don't need more spending money. Middle and lower income groups are more likely to spend the rebate and so help fuel the economy.
Let's look at the data... The top website receiving traffic from searches for "2008 tax rebate" in the four weeks to February 23, 2008 was About.com's US Government Info - Resources website. Traffic to that website doubled last week. I am going to use this website as my proxy for demographic data on who is searching for details on the tax rebate. That site received 82% of its traffic from search last week and the top search terms sending the website traffic were all related to the tax rebate.
The following chart shows share of visits to the website by household income.
Those making up the largest share of visits are those earning a household income of less than $60K. Good news. Also interesting, the group with the largest traffic share increase compared with two weeks ago (before the rebates were announced) is the under $30K group, with an 11% increase in visits. But, perhaps lower income groups just make up a larger share of visits across the web. I checked the index-representation figures to be sure. The under $30K and $30K-$60K groups are also over-indexed relative to the online population.
So the tax rebate may indeed help boost the economy - now get out there and do your part, SHOP!
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:04 AM
Posted to Government
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Comments
Am I missing something? It seems like the title should read "2008 Tax Rebate Appeals to Lower Income Groups"
Posted by: M. Yang at March 3, 2008 01:22 PM
M Yang, Thanks for catching that - title fixed!
Posted by: Heather Hopkins at March 3, 2008 07:56 PM
Sorry, but limiting the tax rebate to those making $75,000 and less just limits the tax rebate to the lower half of middle class. Making $80,000 does not make one rich. Setting aside the entire unfairness of only cutting providing tax relief for those who pay less in actual dollars, is Washington so out of touch with reality as to think that if you make over $75,000 you are no longer middle class? This should be a wake-up call to Americans who are swallowing the line from Obamary that they would only raise taxes on the rich. Rather than questioning the veracity of that comment (which I have little doubt to be their intention), may the average American should question them as to what they really define as the middle class and the rich.
Posted by: FinanceBuzz at March 6, 2008 03:07 PM
