Blue Christmas: Bad news for retailers still hurting from a weak back to school shopping season — holiday spending looks like it will take a dip. A new survey says 54% of Americans plan to spend $300 or more on presents for family and friends. That’s down 10% from the number of people who planned to spend $300 or more in 2008, says ING Direct. Eleven percent of people polled say they don’t plan to spend any money on presents, compared with 7% who didn’t buy gifts in 2008. Americans 55 years of age or older, who have taken a big hit to their retirement accounts in the past year, were most likely to cut back on holiday gift buying.
Death rates falling: U.S. life expectancy has risen to a new high, now standing at nearly 78 years, the government reported today. The increase is due mainly to falling death rates in almost all the leading causes of death. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2007 is nearly three months greater than for children born in 2006. Life expectancy is the period a child born in 2007 is expected to live, assuming mortality trends stay constant. U.S. life expectancy has grown nearly one and a half years in the past decade, and is now at an all-time high. Last year, the Center for Disease Control said U.S. life expectancy had inched above 78 years. But the CDC recently changed how it calculates life expectancy, which caused a small shrink in estimates to below 78. The United States continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in estimated life span. Japan has the longest life expectancy — 83 years for children born in 2007, according to the World Health Organization.
