What is actually published about gift spending

Search for what to spend on a birthday gift and you will find a tidy hierarchy: so much for a partner, less for a sibling, less again for a colleague. The numbers are specific, they are repeated across dozens of sites, and they agree with each other closely enough to look researched.

We went looking for where they come from. Here is what we found, and what we did not.

What is published

One survey with a national sample publishes a birthday gift figure. Empower's "Going Rate" study, fielded 19–21 August 2025 among 2,202 US adults and weighted to be nationally representative, reports:

| Occasion | Going rate | |---|---| | Birthday gift, adult | $55.65 | | Birthday gift, child | $83.03 | | Holiday gift, per person | $64.10 | | Wedding gift | $85.18 | | Valentine's Day gift | $50.69 | | Teacher or coach gift | $15.00 |

That is the figure this site uses, and it is stated with its methodology on every recipient page.

What is not published, and this is the point

The survey gives one number for an adult's birthday gift. It publishes no breakdown by relationship at all. Not by partner, not by parent, not by sibling, not by colleague.

So $55.65 is what a representative sample of Americans say they spend on an adult's birthday gift — any adult. It is not what people spend on a spouse, and it is not what they spend on a co-worker, and the survey does not claim to know the difference.

That leaves an obvious question about every gift guide that does claim to know.

Where the confident numbers come from

We could not trace the per-relationship figures to any survey, any statistical agency, or any published dataset. They cite each other. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer expenditure survey has a "gifts" line with no breakdown by occasion. The National Retail Federation covers Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and the winter holidays — not birthdays.

We are not accusing anyone of inventing figures. It is likelier that a plausible hierarchy was written down once, sounded right, and got copied. But "sounded right and got copied" is not a source, and a number without a source cannot be checked, which means it cannot be wrong — and that is precisely what makes it useless.

This site therefore does something that looks like a weakness and is not: on a page about gifts for your sister, it tells you the figure is for any adult. Nobody publishes a sister-specific number, and pretending otherwise would be the easy path.

The one comparison the data does support, and it is a good one

The same survey asks about other occasions, and two of them are structurally identical: a parent, once a year, by convention.

• Mother's Day: $55.25
• Father's Day: $38.48

That is about 44% more for mothers than for fathers, from the same respondents, in the same survey, on the same question. Whatever explains it — and the data does not explain it — it is not a difference in what the occasion is.

We include it because it is the rare case where the published data supports a genuine comparison rather than a single lonely number. If you want one fact from this page to carry away, that is the one.

What people say about gifting, which is its own answer

The same 2,202 respondents were asked how they feel about it:

• 60% say gifting culture has got "out of hand"
• 48% report "gift fatigue"
• 33% have adopted a "no gifts" policy this year
• 86% agree a gift can be meaningful without being expensive
• 75% say gifts are more expensive because of tariffs and inflation

Read those next to the going rate and the useful conclusion is not "spend $55.65". It is that a majority of the people you are buying for think the whole exercise has become too much, and almost nine in ten of them think the amount is not the part that matters.

The honest caveats

• These are self-reported figures. People say what they spend; the survey does not observe purchases. Self-reports on socially visible spending tend to be tidier than reality.
• US only. The sample is American adults, and nothing here transfers to another country's norms.
• One survey. A single well-run survey is much better than a chain of citations, but it is still one measurement, and a second would be worth more than any amount of confident prose.
• Averages, not advice. The going rate describes what a population reports. It does not know your relationship, your income, or what the person would actually like.