Band 6+: The bar chart below shows shares of expenditures for five major categories in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan in the year 2009.

The bar chart compares the proportions of expenses in food, housing, transportation, health care, and clothing in four countries in 2009.

Overall, what stands out from the graph is that the expenses of housing, food, and transportation were higher rather than those of the other two categories.

Regarding the chart, it is obvious that in the USA a significant amount of money was allocated to housing and transportation, with nearly 25% and 20%, respectively, while all other three sectors accounted for less than 15%. In Canada, the expenditure of housing was as high as that of transportation with 20% whereas food ranked second with 15%, and health care and clothing were altogether responsible for roughly 10%.

Focusing on other countries, in the United Kingdom there was little difference between the shares of housing and food, while the former accounted for approximately 25%, the latter was lower by a margin of 5%. The remaining sectors were altogether responsible for a mere 23%. In Japan, the figures for food and housing were the same with 22% as well as health care and clothing with 5%, whilst the transportation accounted for a tenth.