Here are some frightening numbers about this upcoming Halloween, based upon an article from Kiplinger.com

• total spending for Halloween will reach over $5 billion, second only to Christmas
  
• 36 million Americans will trick-or-treat
• the autumn harvest of pumpkins will total about 1 billion pounds
• one-third of adults will dress up.  The most popular costume for men is a pirate, while women prefer a witch costume.  Little girls will favor the princess attire, whereas boys like superhero costumes
• 7.4 million households will dress up their pets
• the average costume costs $23.33
• the average household will spend $20 this year on candy
• one out of two households will decorate, spending almost $1.5 billion in aggregate
  

The fact that we will spend over $5 billion on Halloween seemed a little excessive to me, so I did a little research and found a list of countries along with their 2006 GDP (Gross Domestic Product).  According to Wikipedia, it turns out that $5 billion is around the GDP of Nicaragua (~$5.4 billion) and more than the GDP of Haiti ($4.5B-$5.0B ).

 How many starving people we could feed if we decided to spend less on Halloween and give to people who are truly in need?  I'm sure that 1 or 2 billion dollars would go a long way...

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