Greg Mankiw shows this stunning graph (from Andrew Biggs) in health care spending for pets in the U.S.:
I usually don’t like those double-y-axis plots, but I have to say that this one works pretty well.
I’d like to see both lines adjusted for inflation and normed by (human) population, but that wouldn’t change the relative positions of the two lines. As Mankiw puts it, “Science has consistently found new ways to extend and improve our lives. Wonderful as they are, they do not come cheap. Fortunately, our incomes are growing, and it makes sense to spend this growing prosperity on better health.” I’ve heard nowadays of people doing MRI’s on their pets [insert PET scan and CAT scan jokes here], which seems goofy to me, but maybe I’m just behind the times.
It would be fun to see what’s happening in other countries, where spending on human health care has increased much much slower than in the U.S. What’s been happening with their pets? Have they been spending a consistent 1/200 of their health spending on pets as well?