Top vs Bottom Income Quartile Spending Gap

Opportunity Insights publishes card spending for people in the richest and poorest quarters of U.S. ZIP codes, each measured against its own January 2020 level. Subtracting the bottom quartile's growth from the top quartile's gives -13.9 percentage points for June 2026. A year earlier, in June 2025, the gap was -10.5 percentage points, so it has moved 3.4 percentage points in favor of the lowest-income ZIP codes. The gap was -9.3 percentage points a month earlier; month-to-month moves can include seasonal swings, which is why we compare with a year earlier. The latest month is provisional and is revised at the next update.

The data are credit and debit card purchases from Affinity Solutions, processed by Opportunity Insights. Each cardholder is placed in a quartile by the median household income of the ZIP code where they live, using 2014-2018 Census survey data. The bottom quartile's cut-off is roughly $46,000 a year and the top quartile's roughly $78,000. Each quartile's spending is compared with its own spending from January 6 to February 2, 2020, and adjusted for seasonal patterns against 2019.

A negative gap does not mean people in low-income ZIP codes spend more dollars; each group is measured against its own starting point, and people in high-income ZIP codes spent far more per day at the start. The figures are not adjusted for inflation, leave out spending not made by card, such as rent and car purchases, and do not describe individual households. Opportunity Insights states no cause for the gap, and changes in which card providers are in the sample can move it.

Opportunity Insights rewrites earlier months at each monthly update, and has published this national monthly file only since June 2025. Its older weekly file, which stopped in June 2024, gives different values for the same months, so the two should not be joined. The paycheck-to-paycheck rate looks at household budgets from a different source.