The Nation - News from Jan. 14, 1986

Teen-agers held the purse strings to $65 billion last year, spending $30 billion of their own money on such things as videotapes and fast food, and $35 billion of their parents’ money on groceries and gas for the family car, a research company said. “The family is still funding the grocery purchases, but teens are doing the buying,” said Grady Hauser, vice president for marketing for Teen-Age Research Unlimited of Lake Forest, a Chicago suburb. Topping the items that the 1,600 teen-agers surveyed bought most often in 1985 were fast food, soft drinks, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, clothes, ice cream, bubble gum and movie tickets, Hauser said.