The American Household Is Worried. Here Is What the Numbers Say.

Consumer sentiment is stuck below 50, older Americans are losing confidence fastest, and the housing market is flashing warning lights. An Altas Special Report on the mood at the kitchen table, nine days before the vote.

By Clara Hughes

Forget the cable-news shouting for a minute. The best way to understand how Americans feel about the economy is to ask them. Two of the country's oldest surveys do exactly that, every month. Right now, both say the same thing: households are anxious, and the anxiety is about prices. The headline numbers The University of Michigan's final October reading of consumer sentiment came in at 48.0, essentially unchanged from 48.1 in September and down from 53.6 a year ago, a drop of about 10%, according to the university's Surveys of Consumers. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell 6.7 points to 81.9 in September, from 88.6 in August. Its Expectations Index, which tracks how