Food Spending

Alden Manchester

Food Review/ National Food Review, 1991, vol. 14, issue 3

Abstract: 'Incomes normally rise faster than food expenditures, but in 1990, food spending as a percentage of income rose slightly. Much of the growth in food spending came from people eating more outside the home, where prices are higher than in grocery stores. Rising incomes are chiefly responsible for the increased spending on food away from home. Much of the increase in household income is due to a rise in the number of households with more than one earner. Such households generally have more money and less time, and eat out more often, than single-earner households. Food and alcoholic beverage expenditures in the United States totaled $626 billion in 1990, 6 percent more than in 1989 (table 1). Total spending for food to be eaten at home rose 5.2 percent from 1989 to 1990, while expenditures for food away from home increased 7.2 percent. Since 1965, away-from-home food expenditures have increased nearly ninefold, which is double the rate of increase of athome expenditures (table 1). People are eating out more as incomes rise and as more women are employed outside the home. Spending for alcoholic beverages rose 4 percent from 1989. In real terms (once adjusted for inflation), however, total overall food sales rose just 0.3 percent between 1989 and 1990. A 2.1-percent increase in real spending for food away from home was offset by a 1.1 -percent decline in real spending for food at home.

Keywords: Consumer/Household Economics; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266033/files/FoodReview-036.pdf (application/pdf)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/266033/files/F ... 6.pdf?subformat=pdfa (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uersfr:266033

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.266033

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Food Review/ National Food Review from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().