What households would give up to afford AC
31%
31% would give up takeout meals for a month to afford AC in an especially hot summer — the most common answer.
n = 3,011 U.S. adults in households earning below $50,000 · Fielded July 2026 · Cherry Data Signals
Breakdown
takeout meals31%
new clothes19%
streaming subscriptions17%
vacation or travel14%
social activities13%
personal savings6%
0%50%100%
Figures are rounded and may not total exactly 100%.
Methodology
- Sample
- 3,011
- Population
- U.S. adults in households earning below $50,000
- Country
- United States
- Fielded
- July 2026
- Research by
- Cherry Data Signals
- Study
- Lower-Income Households Switching Off AC
Cite this statistic
Cherry Data Signals (July 2026). "What households would give up to afford AC" Survey of 3,011 U.S. adults in households earning below $50,000, United States. https://cherrysignals.com/statistics/what-households-would-give-up-to-afford-ac
Free to reproduce with attribution to Cherry Data Signals and a link to this page.
Related statistics
- Lower-income households switching off AC to save money12.7M
- Lower-income Connecticut households with AC regularly switched it off to cut bills, representing an estimated 251,575 households61%
- The states where switching off AC is least common9%
- The largest state total1.29M
- Nights per month without AC11
- What worries households about running AC31%
- Delayed another household bill to afford AC27%
- Slept much worse when limiting nighttime AC; 32% slightly worse; 9% slept better without it37%
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