Economy
What Dollar Store Locations Reveal About America
Surprising data on who's shopping at the discount chains.
"We are awakening to a dollar-store economy," proclaimed The New York Times Magazine this past summer.
Long popular among the poor, the Great Recession has been a boon to dollar stores, bringing in a whole new wave of customers. "Same-store sales, a key measure of a retailer’s health, spiked at the three large, publicly traded chains in this year’s first quarter - all were up by at least 5 percent," the Times article noted.