By: Laura Walton AFC®
We’ve all experienced sticker shock at the grocery store now and then so it came as a big surprise to me that our spending on food is a fraction of what it has been historically.
Today we spend about 13% of our income on food. In 1900, we spent 43%!
And, we find ourselves spending less than 84 other countries – here’s a sampling:
Food at home as a percentage of consumer spending, 2014
U.S. | 6.6 | Italy | 14.2 |
U.K. | 8.6 | Greece | 16.8 |
Canada | 9.2 | Costa Rica | 20 |
Australia | 9.9 | Mexico | 23.3 |
Germany | 10.2 | China | 25.5 |
Sweden | 12.5 | India | 30.7 |
Spain | 13 | Peru | 36.4 |
France | 13.3 | Kenya | 46.9 |
Japan | 14.1 | Nigeria | 56.6 |
Predictably, as our incomes rise, our spending on food increases. The highest earners spend about 8% of their income on food while the lowest earners spend about 36% of their income on food.
While modern agricultural practices have made food relatively abundant and cheap for Americans, our lowest income earners would rank 78th out of the 85 countries in the above survey based on the percentage of their income spent on food – an eye-opening statistic that helps explain why 1 in 6 Americans face hunger.