Shopping around? How households adjusted food spending over the Great Recession

Rachel Griffith, Martin O'Connell and Kate Smith

No 10096, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Over the Great Recession real wages stagnated and unemployment increased. Concurrently, food prices rose sharply, outstripping growth in food expenditure, and leading to a reduction in calories purchased. This has led to concern about rising food poverty. We study British households to assess how they adjusted to changes in the economic environment. We show they switched to cheaper calories; implying food consumption was smoother than expenditure. We use longitudinal data to quantify the way households lowered their per calorie spending, and show they done this in part by increasing shopping effort, and without lowering the nutritional quality of their groceries.

Keywords: Nutrition; Opportunity cost of time; Shopping behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Shopping Around: How Households Adjusted Food Spending Over the Great Recession (2016)
Working Paper: Shopping around: how households adjusted food spending over the Great Recession (2015)
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