Halloween was once a time of both tricks and treats. Lately, Halloween has become one big treat for businesses, with consumers spending an estimated US$11.6 billion on this one-night holiday. That’s roughly the same amount of money as Americans spend on children’s books each year.

This massive amount of spending is puzzling, given the media is filled with stories about the economic hardships many families face.

As a business school professor who has written previously about Halloween, I was curious why Halloween spending is just below all-time highs at the same time many people report high levels of economic angst.

Americans spend billions every Halloween

The best data on Halloween spending comes each year from the National Retail Federation, which surveys Americans about their shopping plans just before the holiday. It found that U.S. consumers will spend over $11 billion this year, which is about half the amount spent annually on dental care for children under age 17.

The most recent survey also shows that about three out of four Americans will celebrate in some fashion. Because not everyone observes the holiday, the federation calculates that the typical person celebrating will spend $104 on Halloween.

The federation breaks down spending into four categories. About one-third of spending will be on costumes for children, adults and pets. Another third will be spent on decorations like giant skeletons. About a final third is spent on candy, and the remaining sliver is spent on greeting cards.

Back in 2005, the federation estimated the holiday would generate only $3.3 billion of spending. This means Halloween spending has grown dramatically, by about three and a half times, in just two decades, or about double if we are adjusting for inflation.

Unmasking the causes of rising Halloween spending

What has driven Halloween spending skyward? Some of the growth is due to inflation, which has increased prices by about 65% over the past two decades. Some of the growth is due to more people living in the U.S. In 2005, the U.S. had about 290 million people, while today the figure is closing in on 340 million.

While these two factors explain some of the growth, they don’t explain it all.

To understand more, I looked at some government data:

The U.S. tracks what the typical family spends on a wide variety of products and services to measure the cost of living. Spending each year is monitored via the Consumer Expenditure Survey. This survey has publicly provided data on annual candy spending since 2013, when it found the typical family spent $88 a year on candy.

The latest figures for 2023 show U.S. families have developed a very sweet tooth: Candy spending by the typical family is now at $164, which means candy outlays have almost doubled from a bit over a decade ago.

While this increase in candy consumption undoubtedly boosts spending at Halloween, it also has a downside. The American Dental Association has shown a dramatic increase in spending at the dentist office, as many people make emergency dentist visits as teeth get cracked on candy.

Spending on costumes has also soared.

In 2005, the best estimate was that $1.2 billion would be spent on just dressing up, while this year the figure is $3.8 billion.

Why so much? Costumes used to be just for children, but today many adults are dressing up. About 1 in 5 adults say they will be wearing a costume for Halloween. Beyond costumes for people, Americans spend millions of dollars on costumes for their pets.

The National Retail Federation has not tracked my favorite Halloween category, pumpkin sales, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture has. When I was young, each family in my neighborhood typically had one pumpkin on their doorstep. Now, I routinely see houses with many – both in my old neighborhood and my new one, which is a few miles away in another part of Boston.

It seems it’s not just my neighbors who are buying more gourds. In 2005, the USDA calculated that there were about four and a half pounds of pumpkins for sale for every person just before the holiday. In 2023, the amount had risen to almost six pounds per person. This means there are about 50% more pumpkins available for carving and for making pies.

While polls suggest many Americans are feeling financially fragile, the data indicates it isn’t having much impact on Halloween spending. After all, over the past two decades, Halloween has become an ever-bigger commercial holiday.

Halloween can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be scary for your finances. If you are struggling financially this year, before buying on credit giant candy bars that only get half-eaten, or cute pet costumes most animals probably don’t want to wear, think about maybe cutting back.

Jay L. Zagorsky, Associate Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A growing number of students in public schools – right now, about 15% of them – are eligible for special education services. These services include specially designed instruction for students with autism, learning or physical disabilities, or traumatic brain injuries. But going into the current school year, more than half of U.S. public schools anticipate being short-staffed in special education. Dr. Kimber Wilkerson, a professor of special education and department chair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains why there’s a shortage and what needs to be done to close the gap.

The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Which students receive special education services?

Kimber Wilkerson: Students with a disability label receive special education services. They need these additional services and sometimes instruction in school so they can access the curriculum and thrive like their peers.

What is happening with staffing for special education?

Wilkerson: Since special education became a thing in the ’70s, there have always been challenges in filling all the special education positions.

In the past 10 years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, those challenges started to increase. There were more open positions in special education at the beginning of each school year than in previous decades. In the 2023-24 school year, 42 states plus the District of Columbia reported teacher shortages in special education.

What is causing these shortages?

Wilkerson: One, there are fewer young people choosing teaching as a major in college and as a profession. And special education is affected by these lower rates more than other forms of education.

Also, there’s more attrition – people leaving their teaching job sooner than you might expect – not because they’re retiring, but because they are tired of the job.

They want to do something different. They want to go back to school. Sometimes it’s life circumstances, but the number of people leaving the job before retirement age has increased. And in our state, Wisconsin, about 35% of all educators leave the field before they hit their fifth year.

That number is even higher for special educators. About half of special educators are out of the profession within five years.

Why do special education teachers leave the profession?

Wilkerson: There’s not a national study that speaks to that reason. There are some localized studies, and people report things like too much paperwork or too many administrative tasks associated with the job. Sometimes they report the students’ behavioral challenges. Sometimes it’s a feeling of isolation, or a lack of support from the school.

How are students with disabilities affected when their school does not have enough special educators?

Wilkerson: In a school that’s one special educator short, the other special educators have to take over that caseload. Instead of having 12 students on their caseload, maybe now they have 20. So, the amount of individual attention given to each student with a disability decreases.

Also, when teachers with experience leave the profession, they leave behind a less experienced group of teachers. This means the students are losing out on the benefit of those years of wisdom and experience.

What are some strategies to recruit and retain more special education teachers?

Wilkerson: There’s a range of strategies that different universities, states and school districts have taken, like residency programs.

In these programs, the person who is learning to be a teacher, and who is referred to as a teaching resident, works alongside a mentor teacher for an entire year in a school, and they get paid to do so. They’re not the teacher of record, but they’re learning and getting paid, and they’re in that school community.

Can you tell us about your recent study on supporting new special education teachers?

Wilkerson: One thing that made a big difference is when the teachers in our study, which is now under review, had access to a mentor and a group of their peers. We called this facilitated peer-to-peer group of teachers a “community of practice.” Every other week, on Zoom, we’d get these new special education teachers from different school districts together, along with experienced teachers. And they would do some sort of work on problems, bringing in the things that were challenging, and work on possible solutions as a group.

We also used Zoom to do one-on-one mentoring. And what people liked about it was that they could talk to someone who wasn’t right in their building and right in their district who they could be open and vulnerable with.

Sometimes, special educators can be isolated because they’re not necessarily a part of a grade-level team. They work with kids across a lot of classrooms. This gave them an opportunity to have their own kind of community, and that made a difference.

We also surveyed their level of burnout and how good they felt about the job they did. And then we surveyed special education teachers who weren’t participating in our community of practice.

At the end of the year, those people who had that mentoring and the community of practice felt less burnt out, and they also felt more effective in the area of classroom management. And that’s critical, because burnout is one of the primary reasons people leave the profession.

So if we can make people feel like they’re better equipped to handle this challenging position, then that’s one strategy to increase the number of people wanting to stay in their job year after year.

Watch the full interview to hear more.

SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.

Kimber Wilkerson, Professor of Special Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.