The Failing Neighborhood Economy of Trick-or-Treating

On the eve of last year’s Halloween, my roommate and I made the adult leap and headed to Target to load up on a bucket of candy. With the festivity falling on a Thursday, we chose to skip the chaos of a wild night to partake in the simple joy of handing out sweets to creatively costumed children. 

However, footsteps rarely arrived at our building, and the majority of the king-sized Twix bars, which were lucky enough to experience consumption, ended up with the two girls who purchased them. It was as if we prepared for an event that never existed. 

It’s important to recognize how complicated trick-or-treating can be when living in a six-unit apartment building, and, after further reflection, we understood how ridiculous it may be for young children to walk up two flights of stairs to our specific unit for a piece of chocolate. However, after calling my parents in suburban Texas, I found their shared experience alarming. 

The current trick-or-treat system looks busted. Although its outcomes may not meet the highest scientific standards, a 2023 poll by USA Today found that 74% of respondents reported seeing fewer trick-or-treaters. Its associated article also mentioned how Vivant, a home tech company specializing in doorbell cameras, noticed fewer than two trick-or-treaters arrived at each home. 

Looking back to my childhood, Halloween felt like a neighborhood stock exchange powered by sugar and social trust. Parents and children invested hours into their costumes and tactfully wandered the streets to determine which homes would provide the highest rewards. The market relied on the unspoken rule of mutual participation, and almost everyone seemed to benefit. 

It’s a revealing shift. The decline of traditional trick-or-treating feels like a mirror of the broader economy, where private alternatives rise as public systems decline. Once serving as an open market dependent on trust, it’s now outsourced to more controlled environments. 

Trunk-or-treat’s rise reflects this change. The practice of children exploring a pre-approved parking lot is rooted in convenience and efficiency. It’s almost like a corporate merger of traditional trick-or-treating.

Of course, this practicality is understandable. Halloween isn’t a federally recognized holiday, and most years it continues to compete with homework, jobs and weekday exhaustion. Parents are tired, children have school, and literal scary people exist. The decline may not be entirely due to a lack of interest, but participating in the holiday may feel riskier. 

The trick-or-treat system relies on a shared belief in social trust. If the system is to work, almost everyone must play along. The occasional home with dark lights is fine. However, if most neighbors stopped handing out candy, the incentive to leave home would collapse, and the candy market would freeze. 

This shortage of community capital results in a Halloween version of a liquidity crisis, where the lack of circulation of social bonds and treat contracts destroys the entire system. However, according to the National Retail Federation, Halloween spending is set to reach a record of $13.1 billion. 

Rather than failing in dollars, the Halloween economy is failing in spirit. 

The spontaneous thrill of wandering beyond neighborhood boundaries that defines the trick-or-treat tradition is now turning into a practice of control and predictability, and it’s hard not to feel as if something essential is slipping away. 

Holding the trick-or-treating practice together was the fundamental characteristic of social capital through the medium of trust. It taught children how good things can come together when engaging with community members in a form of generosity with little strings attached. Whether it is Halloween or housing, such a system depends on the people who believe in it. 

The faltering belief in the candy economy might parallel our monetary one. Rather than sharing, people retreat to their own spaces and consume in limited areas.

However, even failing systems can recover. Halloween needs more participation in a nostalgic sense. For all the sugar crashes, silly costumes and frustrated almond moms, trick-or-treating was never just about the candy. It was a civic ritual where people learn to trust each other and share with their doors wide open, even in the dark.