LOGAN – With Halloween right around the corner, the personal finance website WalletHub has released its usual annual report on projected spending for the upcoming holiday.
The finance experts estimated that Americans’ spending for costumes, decorations, festivities, candy and refreshments will top $13 billion in 2026.
Beginning about 100 years ago as a relatively inexpensive way for children to observe the traditional holiday with trick-or-treating, the celebration of Halloween has evolved into an excuse for costumed adults to party starting in the 1960s, gradually becoming America’s second-largest commercial holiday after Christmas.
“Halloween holds a big place in American popular culture,” according to Chip Lupo, an analyst at WalletHub. “We collectively spend billions of dollars celebrating the holiday every year.
“At the same time, its also a holiday that comes with a certain degree of risk, given that children are visiting stranger’s houses in the dark.”
But youngsters aren’t half as vulnerable at the doors of strange homes as they are crossing city streets after dark on Halloween.
That’s the conclusion of researchers at MoneyGreek who analyzed 15 years of Halloween auto accident data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration compiled from 2010 to 2024.
They found that Halloween has the highest child pedestrian death toll of any calendar date, with an average of 45 children killed nationwide in auto mishaps over 15 years, nearly twice death toll recorded on the next-highest date. More than half of those deaths were linked to incidents that occurred between 6 and 9 p.m.
But experts say that parent don’t have to run the risk of their youngsters being involved in traffic accidents on Halloween.
“I see regular ‘trunk or treat’ events in my area,” explains Bart McLeroy, a professor at Collin College in Texas. “I know a lot of parents are more comfortable with that.”
“In areas where there are going to be lots of kids walking around,” he emphasizes, “proactively assigning officers to control traffic at busy intersections can be a good idea. Generally encouraging awareness and caution among the citizenry on Halloween is just a smart move.”
“The best cities for Halloween are those that provide the safest conditions for celebrating, along with an abundance of activities, Halloween-related stores and good weather,” Lopo suggests.
The WalletHub analysis of Halloween can be found by going online to https://wallethub.com/edu/best-cities-for-halloween/7785
The full study by MoneyGeek can be viewed at
https://www.moneygeek.com/living/driving/halloween-pedestrian-deaths/