News

Weekly cash use falls in the US

December 20, 2018

Approximately 3 in 10 (29 percent) U.S. adults in a recent study by the nonprofit Pew Research Center said that, in a typical week, they made no cash purchases. This compares with 24 percent in 2015 who said they did not use cash weekly. 

At the other end of the scale, the number of U.S. adults who said they made all or almost all of their purchases in cash shrank to 18 percent from 24 percent in 2015.

As with most surveys, the Pew study found an inverse relationship between household income and cash use. Survey participants with the smallest incomes were most likely to use cash, while those with the largest incomes were least likely to use it.

The largest shift from 2015 to 2018 was in the share of survey respondents who said they always try to keep cash on hand.

In 2015, 60 percent said they tried to keep cash on hand at all times in case they needed it. In the most recent survey, less than half (46 percent) said that having cash on hand was a concern, as "there are lots of other ways to pay for things.

As in most studies, younger participants were less likely to worry about not having cash on hand than those over 50.

The Pew study collected data from 10,683 participants between Sept. 24 and Oct. 7. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.