US health expenditure per capita

For eighteen years, Americans increased their spending on pets and their spending on human health in near-perfect synchrony, with an r of 0.97, suggesting that dogs and hospitals are jointly optimizing American wallets. The most plausible theory is that pets cause health problems which cause health spending, completing a perfect economic loop that benefits veterinarians and cardiologists equally. Alternatively, both are simply things Americans buy more of as they get richer. The pet insurance industry, which exists at the intersection of both trends, is probably not complaining.

US pet industry spending grew from roughly $36 billion in 2005 to over $136 billion by 2022, driven by the 'pet humanization' trend — treating pets as family members deserving premium food, veterinary care, and wellness products. US health expenditure per capita grew from around $7,000 to over $13,000 over the same period, driven by aging demographics, pharmaceutical price increases, and expanded insurance coverage. Both are income-elastic goods that grow faster than GDP: as Americans get wealthier, they spend disproportionately more on both their own health and their pets' wellbeing. The 18-year window captures near-continuous growth in both.

Some correlations are spurious and some simply measure the same underlying abundance. When a society gets richer, it tends to get richer about everything at once, which makes the dataset very crowded with coincidences.