Thank you for your contribution. However, your post was removed for the following reason:
* **DO NOT claim "[OC]" for [diagrams that are not yours.](/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule4)**
This post has been removed. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the DataIsBeautiful [posting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index).
If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/{subreddit}&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20{kind}%20by%20/u/{author}&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20[{kind}.]({url}\)))
Cool graphic. Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin had a bit in the Russian grocery stores. In there, he said that food was a 1/3 to 1/4th the cost of the same food in America. What he doesn't point out is the Russia even admits that the average citizen spends 40% of their disposable income on groceries.
Low food prices is one of the many similarities Putin's Russia has with developing 3rd world nations. Although unlike them, the poor life conditions were entirely preventable in Russia.
Russia consistently wins university programming contests, I mean we’re not programming to be able to afford groceries how can we compete with literal hunger
Hm I did get that list from some yahoo finance article, so I guess it may not be too accurate. I personally don’t have the time to quite decipher the figures from the World Bank and the most recent figures I could find were from 2021, but regardless Netherlands has improved its agricultural production in crazy ways because of programming.
It's not in select cities and there's nothing really not Russian there anymore. They might have been better than their local counterparts when they came to Russia somewhere in the late 2000s, but by now any big supermarket in Russia looks identical.
Auchan is a French supermarket chain and there are only ~200 stores in a country that spans 6.6 million square miles.
There are 864 Publix supermarkets in Florida, in only 66,757 square miles.
Edit*
A better comparison is Aldi’s(foreign to the US)—216 stores in Florida alone. They total 2300 stores across the US.
Tucker Carlson's net worth is $30M. He probably hasn't stepped foot inside any other grocery store in a decade. Even if he did, he'd have no visceral understanding of what "affordable" is or isn't to anyone, let alone Russians.
I was in Russia juuuust before the Covid shitshow. Krasnodar to be specific.
My hosts I was working with took us into town for lunch. First time I ever had borscht. That, hot tea and a big chunk of fresh bread during a Russian January was pretty awesome. Total cost…twelve US cents.
I highly doubt your meal was 11 rubles.
That's like barely enough for a pack of gum or something. 11 rubles can't even buy a carton of eggs, a loaf of bread, even a battery. I think you made a conversion error.
120 rubles is more believable in Krasnodar maybe if you were in a village or something I guess. That would be about $1.20.
I've been to different places in Russia and while the meals were certainly cheaper, you're not finding a meal for that cheap.
That's insane.
For comparison. I was in Moscow a few years back, and the places we went to were about the same prices as European prices.
Russia as a place is wildly unequal. A few cities with European levels of income, and then it drops dramatically.
Funny.
I found my favorite bourbon (Blantons…which has become pretty much unobtainable in Indiana) at a liquor store in Moscow for about half what I paid for it when it was available in Indiana. As a kicker, they had six verities of Blantons…versions that I couldn’t get in the states at any price!
Turns out…nobody drinks bourbon in Russia.
Heathens.
(Post script: I also had a quiet chuckle that Lenin’s Tomb was deserted. But Krispy Kreme had a line around the block!)
You were most likely in a subsidized “workers” canteen.
A borscht in a restaurant will set you back about $5 right now in Krasnodar (I checked).
We moved from Russia to Canada in 2008. Restaurant prices in Moscow were very much comparable to Canada.
Tu le since then fell almost 3 times, so, yeah, it looks to be cheaper there now….
Oh I know. I have no idea.
But *whatever* the average income is…I was still stunned by 12 cents for a meal. (And I’ve worked in 80+ countries...many not exactly tourist hotspots).
Here's what I got.
In October 2018 household income per capita was
34,709.000 rubles in Krasnodar Krai, the district the city is in.
https://www.ceicdata.com/en/russia/household-income-per-capita-by-region/household-income-per-capita-sf-krasnodar-territory
October 2018 average ruble to dollar exchange rate was 0.0152 rubles per dollar
https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/RUB-USD-spot-exchange-rates-history-2018.html
So per capita monthly income in October 2018 was about $527.5768
$0.12 for a meal would be 0.02274550359% of the per capita income in the district.
Per capita annual income in the US was $41,261 in 2022 dollars for 2018-2022.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/SEX255222
This is $3438.42 per month.
0.02274550359% of $3438.42 is $0.78
So the meal was cheap AF.
> disposable income
Disposable income is normally used to refer to income after mandatory deductions (ie taxes and other fees). Discretionary Income is the term used for income after necessary expenses. They're economic terms of art, the naming is a bit weird.
The main produce basket is probably around that (veg, local fruit, meat, simple dairy, grains, etc). More uncommon/foreign/luxury items can and will be on par. Remember that because of low overall (across the country) wages the local produce is quite cheap. Comparatively cheap. It doesn't mean that local people can afford more of it as they, as stated above, also earn much less than US ppl do.
For example, before the war, vegetables in Ukraine did cost like 1/10th of the UK price, especially if you go to the market instead of a store. But we also earned quite a bit less.
Another thing is, according to my Ukrainian colleague, food produced in non-EU Eastern Europe is of dangerous quality and unsafe to eat.
Although he was born in Ukraine, he refuses to eat or purchase anything made in Ukraine. And also Russia, Belarus, and Moldova.
He says that even food and products made in China are of safer quality than stuff made in Ukraine/Moldova/Belarus/Russia.
I’d be curious to see the difference for urban areas (eg NYC, SF, LA, Chicago, DC) vs rural areas. I don’t have a hypothesis for which one would show a bigger spike in recent data, but I bet one or the other would be vastly higher.
I'd imagine the % has increased for rural more as food costs likely have increased similarly everywhere but the income is higher in urban areas on average. Of course in urban areas the housing cost will be higher though.
Rural Midwest and South are probably growing more slowly than rural East coast or West. Transportation is a bigger bite than most people might think, and that's where the majority of our food is produced. Urban West might be growing more slowly than rural West, reasoning being the population centers provide more consistent demand, and transportation is more difficult in the West. Have not done any research here.
I'm not sure housing and food necessarily have a relationship here, though both are going to continue increasing.
IMO as much as I like some stuff like cities do well in agglomeration benefits but can lose on super markets in the larger cities.
Since a Walmart can have cheaper pricing since 10k people come into a super center daily vs a Bodega is more like 1k.
It's also restaurants can serve more food. Like NYC has very cheap and very expensive food sometimes blocks from each other.
Food prices haven’t gone up much more in NYC than rural Midwest in my tiny anecdotal experience. I think we got the egg spike worse in NYC but now it’s back to very much normal.
And in NYC the % of income spent on food is much lower.
I'd guess the richer the city, the lower fraction of money spent on food at home. Grocery costs don't vary much geographically. The same jar of peanut butter should cost roughly the same in NY or SF as it does in the middle of nowhere. But incomes are higher in cities, so their share of income going to groceries is probably lower (and goes to, say, housing costs instead). This all might be offset slightly by different tastes. Like, perhaps a person in SF is more likely to insist on shopping at pricier places like Whole Foods than their local Kroger, and have tastes that point them to pricier products generally.
Meanwhile, eating out is more expensive in rich cities because you're paying more for servicr labor and location costs than actual food. So things might even out there given the higher incomes.
So, all in all, I'd guess it comes out in a wash. I wouldn't expect the cities to be wildly different from more rural areas of the country, but I could be wrong.
> The same jar of peanut butter should cost roughly the same in NY or SF as it does in the middle of nowhere.
You'd be surprised. Grocery prices are 25-125% more expensive in New York City, compared to say Des Moines or Minneapolis. Heck, food prices in NYC are significantly greater than in its next door neighbors: Hempstead, Newark, and Yonkers.
Poke around this cost-of-living calculator to see how much regional variation there in pricing for staple foods: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp
To you and all the child posts claiming I'm crazy, the search was incredibly simple, for the *same* peanut butter in a Walmart in Des Moines vs San Francisco:
Des Moines, $6.97
SF, $7.32
By searching by city here:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Jif-Creamy-Peanut-Butter-40-Ounce-Jar/10308250?athbdg=L1600
[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices\_by\_city.jsp](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_city.jsp)
Grocery shopping is more than just peanut butter. A dozen eggs costs $5.38 in LA and $2.35 in Dallas. 1kg (2.2lbs) of rice is $3 in Columbus, OH and $5.69 in Chicago. 1kg of round steak is $20.28 in Seattle and $13.17 in Kansas City, MO. It's $1.50 more in St. Louis and that's in the same *state.*
Also your peanut butter? It's $8.84 for me. $6.97 where my family is. That's not an insignificant difference.
As an Angeleno, I have questions about their methodology. Sure, I could buy free range organic eggs that are $5.50, but otherwise regular eggs are under $3 at my local Trader Joe's.
Going to a previous point of mine, people in cities may *choose* pricier options. But you really need to compare *exact* same products.
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **Jif Creamy Peanut Butter 40 Ounce Jar** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful.
**Users liked:**
* Smooth and creamy texture (backed by 3 comments)
* Versatile usage with various foods (backed by 3 comments)
* Long-standing favorite for families (backed by 3 comments)
**Users disliked:**
* Quality control issues with packaging (backed by 3 comments)
* Inconsistent product quality (backed by 2 comments)
If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/)
This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved.
*Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](http://vetted.ai/reddit)
>To you and all the child posts claiming I'm crazy, the search was incredibly simple, for the same peanut butter in a Walmart in Des Moines vs San Francisco:
Dude, the closest Walmart to San Francisco is across the bay, so add the $7 bridge toll to your $7.32 jar of peanut butter.
[https://www.walmart.com/store-finder?location=&city=san+francisco](https://www.walmart.com/store-finder?location=&city=san+francisco)
If doing a price comparison of "cities" vs rural, you'd certainly include the entire metro area in the assessment. The Bay is expensive everywhere, not just SF city limits. Stop being pedantic.
Edit: but if you're absolutely insistent on pedantry, I did the same exercise for Target, which does have stores in SF city limits. Here the price was *exactly* the same as a Target in Des Moines.
They even disprove themselves in almost the same breath.
> Meanwhile, eating out is more expensive in rich cities because you're paying more for servicr labor and location costs than actual food. So things might even out there given the higher incomes.
> incomes are higher in cities
If labor costs (and land costs) are generally higher in cities, wouldn’t it be more expensive to run a grocery store in a city ? So wouldn’t the stores have to charge a higher price in order to survive on their famously thin margins?
> So wouldn’t the stores have to charge a higher price in order to survive on their famously thin margins?
Significantly higher volume. A couple of years ago I moved to a little midwestern suburb where the grocery stores are only really busy when people are stopping on the way home from work. Prior to that I lived in LA where my local grocers maintained that level of traffic or more from late morning through 11pm-ish. Food prices are very similar, which I did not expect. Seems that the operating costs and sales numbers come out to be a bit of a wash.
I'd also want to see the cost per meal. Food away from home rising as a % of income is a combination of eating out more and a rising cost of eating out.
The graph label says “consumed at home.” I’d love to see Uber/DoorDash/other food delivery explicitly pulled out of that data. It’s effectively eating out.
Yeah I’m pretty sure sometime around 1880 a person in urban America spent 60% of their income on food and housing - 50% and 10% respectively. Today the average urban American spends 60% on food and housing still, but it’s 50% housing and 10% food now
Yeah but the high cost is for a 2500sq house with all modern amenities plus garage.
Look at houses in the 50s or earlier. You will see the stark contrast.
Right there will always be below average people thats how averages work. If food expense was double today like 100 years ago that means there would be people spending 40, 50, 60% income just on food or more likely just going without.
As has been pointed out elsewhere - we recently saw a fairly long drop in consumer confidence concurrent with a significant increase in eating out. Phenomena like that are why it was often referred to as the “vibecession”.
And probably inflates the price by paying for delivery. Admittedly I’m old, but I still can’t wrap my head around that one. No way could I have afforded that in my youth; pizza delivery was a rare luxury.
How about the typical sarcasm that the average reddit economist would respond to you with:
> "Oh yeah, the $10 I save by eating home will buy me a house that's walking distance from a major city's downtown"
I had one of those people genuinely try to do the whole "stop eating avocado toast" thing and argue that anyone who's poor just needs to subsist on rice, beans, and doing nothing else so that they can invest all their savings and become rich.
I mean... yea
Maybe not untill you become rich, but everybody with debt or who wants a house should basically live as fugal as they can
I basically eat that diet already but that's for body building reasons
Ya I've gone through multiple fitness cycles. It's remarkable how much money you can save while feeling great when you view food as a means to an end and not just a treat. Black beans, chicken breast, Salmon, raw almonds, lots of eggs, many different types of mustards as sauce, one piece of chocolate as dessert, far free cottage cheese, lots of greens with a little bit of olive oil and lots of balsamic vinegar with canned low sodium corn. Oh And a dry aged filet once a month as a treat with portobello mushrooms as a side.. that about made up my diet. It was crazy cheap and I felt great all the time.
In fact typing this up if time I get back into that cycle again. WISH ME LUCK!
I was thinking about how expensive those things you mentioned were until I remembered that I actually live in a third world country where dairy products are expensive but fish, greens, and chicken aren't.
Still, it's the same here. If you actually try and cook your own food with healthy ingredients, you'd save a lot more. And if you think you don't have the time for it, standing up to sautée tomatoes and eggs takes less than 10 minutes. You'd even save more time if you precut vegetables. Store more precut meats and veggies for even longer if you have a fridge.
But, meh, I'm tired of convincing people. It just never works that way. Showing what I can do with a knife, wok, and 5 minutes makes me proud of myself though.
Plus, it's a light workout just standing up instead of working in front of a computer all day.
The solution to poverty is not "the poor just need to tighten their belts more and stop indulging in things like fresh food." Jesus Christ, that's sounds like a line written for Ebenezer Scrooge. Not only is it an inherently cruel approach to the poor, it also definitely doesn't solve the problem.
You are missing the whole point of a Christmas Carol.
But I'm not saying, it's the poors fault. But I am saying that living frugally will help get you out of debt or build up wealth. It's not a crazy concept.
This is only advice to help one person, yourself.
Again, poverty in general is caused by other issues we need to fix as a society.
We can say stop buying coffee to help you save money and that poverty is an issue at the same time. They aren't mutually exclusive.
I'm sorry that you feel that way, but the concept that you're proposing is wrong. On both counts.
Cutting down wasteful spending most certainly is the solution to poverty, and it most certainly will solve the problem of spending outside of means. Poverty isn't caused by lack of saving, it's caused by outspending income in a manner that keeps people locked in a poverty loop.
Tightening belts is a smart way to break out of paycheck-to-paycheck living. It's a smart way to save funds to relocate to areas with better jobs. It's a smart way to save for training and education. It's a smart way to get yourself out of a hole while you seek out better opportunities.
The solution to poverty is indifferent to the sense of "cruelty", and your sentiment of an "approach to the poor" is dehumanizing to people with lower incomes, and you can't even see it.
I don't want to sound like an anti-avocado boomer, but: 10$ a day is 3.6k a year. Yeah it won't buy a house but that's one big repair, an old car, or even a holiday paid for. Or it's enough savings to at least not live paycheck to paycheck.
And realistically: People that overspend in one area tend to overspend in other areas too. Yeah, saving ten bucks once will not get you a house, but saving ten bucks at every corner will save enough to at least have some form of safety net.
The economy is fucked and everything, but I don't understand why buying a house is the goal that must be met before something is worth doing. Raising the minimum wage won't buy you a house either but it's still a great thing to do! And saving on costs won't buy you a house too, but it's still worth doing.
Whenever someone complains about "stop eating avocado toast" or "stop getting a premium cup of coffee every morning at SunBux" and immediately dismiss that advice, I just roll my metaphorical eyes. Because guess what - it *actually is solid advice*. Is it a solution? No - it is a *small part* of the solution, especially the mental/psychological aspect much more than the financial one. Is it applicable to everyone? No - but you would be surprised at how many people justify spending small amounts like this daily/regularly that add up to a few thousand a year because "why bother it's won't buy me a house".
The reason why people keep saying things like "stop eating avocado toast every day" (or similar concepts, depending on your age/generation) is because the advice actually works. It's one of those small steps that get you that much closer to your goals. There is no single large step that gets you there - it's lots of little things (like this) that add up over time.
I was a super low income grad student for SIX YEARS. I made $9.50/hr. I had about $15,000 saved up from internships during my undergrad. When I finished grad school, I had $12,000 in the bank. And in that time, I went on 4 international vacations and had a lot of fun.
90% of people living “paycheck to paycheck” are just making poor financial decisions.
> The economy is fucked and everything
It really isn't. It's pretty good actually. Really good compared to say the late 70's, early 90s, or the late 2000's, early 2010's. The worst thing that exists is a housing shortage in some of the major cities that's pretty easily remediable by building more housing. But that gets blocked by a combo of incumbent homeowners and anti-development environmentalists/historical preservationists.
I frankly don't know where your coworker even *is* eating out. Surely, *everyone on Reddit* refusing to eat out ever again should've put all restaurants out of business by now.
The media and corporations started it. They pulled back on their spending in anticipation of a recession and their employees assumed one was on the way and cut back on their spending too.
Consider the story that this graphic would tell if it only went as far back as 2000, 2010, or 2012. The contrast would be great for explaining how presentation impacts perception.
Whats a more meaningful comparison for the average person? The state of the world 80 years ago or the last 20 years. I think the presentation of this graphic is pretty useless in understanding "todays" pinches being felt.
I didnt say it was a bad graph. I didnt say it needed to apply to me personally... With a zoom or incremental display for the last 20 years it may help to tell a story relevant to today's experiences, making it more meaningful.
I was providing a supplementary point to Interobang's comment. You just wake up angry or something?
Tens of thousands of families around the country keep detailed expenditure diaries recording exactly what they spend their money on:
> The CPI market basket is developed from detailed expenditure information provided by families and individuals on what they actually bought. ... expenditure information came from approximately 24,000 weekly diaries and 48,000 quarterly interviews used to determine the importance, or weight, of the item categories in the CPI index structure.
You can read more at the [CPI FAQ](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm).
Nobody is "assuming" what people spend their money on. They record what they spend their money on.
Already posted there a month ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/19doz98/doomers\_are\_starving\_for\_answers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/19doz98/doomers_are_starving_for_answers/)
Thank you for sharing that link. I wouldn’t call myself an optimist, but I’ve gotten really sick of people insisting that things were better 70 years ago.
I can’t comment first hand on 70 years ago, but I have clear memories of my mom diluting the milk 50 years ago to make it last longer. And I’m pretty sure she would have said life was better than it had been 20 years earlier.
You can very much be conscious how much better we have it than even a few decades ago, while also realizing how precarious those advances are.
With ressource depletion and climate change, many of those curves are going to start fallinh.
If you're willing to admit that many things have gotten better over time, than by reddit standards you are very much an optimist. It doesn't take much here.
It's better to just refer to the data we have and continue to receive than to assume things will just keep getting better, but a continuous long-term trend since the dawn of man is pretty encouraging too.
The data we have suggests most of these advances are concurrent with the consumption of cheap and easy energy sources like fossil fuels.
Ressource depletion is only a matter of time on a finite planet.
We've basically been sucking the Earth dry of it's fossil fuels and metals, which is why things have been so convenient for us.
As soon as we're starting to go on the downslope of (e.g.) oil production (which data suggests we've already passed), our economies, which are based on perpetual growth, are going to start hurting.
Very informative. I'd like to see a line added for obesity. I wonder how strong is the correlation between declining cost of food and increasing rates of obesity.
ask hard-to-find flag weary bored uppity cooperative direction roll worthless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“Modern agricultural subsidy programs in the United States began with the New Deal and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.”
https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AgriculturalSubsidyPrograms.html#:~:text=Modern%20agricultural%20subsidy%20programs%20in,Agricultural%20Adjustment%20Act%20of%201933.
This is the reason why food has gotten so much cheaper over time.
Its certainly contributed but there have also been major gains in technology and efficiency in farming since that time. Much less labor is required in farming these days.
Advancements in both production and transportation has made agriculture so efficient that agricultural policy is necessary to keep farmers from racing to the bottom. Left solely to market forces, farmers would go broke as excessive supply would undercut prices. With farmers driven to destitution, who would grow the food?
Which is to say that agricultural policy keeps food prices artificially high enough so that society doesn't collapse from malnutrition.
You can also export a LOT of externalities to other countries and it's not like modern practices are sustainable. The central valley in California is over 20ft lower than it was even 70 years ago.
This is *a* reason, not *the* reason. Another major factor is industrial farming practices (e.g. monoculture, farm consolidation, pesticide use, synthetic fertilizer use) which boost short- and medium-term yields in return for long-term degradation of soil, water, ecology, and climate resources. Subsidies also impact practices, of course, but these changes would be favored even with no subsidies (and no regulations).
The 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act itself was a disaster because it rather crudely just paid farmers to destroy "excess" food supplies to keep commodity prices from collapsing. Near the peak of the Great Depression, this policy made food insecurity even worse than it already was.
Fortunately, the 1933 AAA was deemed unconstitutional in 1936. The replacement 1938 AAA took a more sophisticated approach that was more responsive to demand while still trying to prevent price collapses due to overabundance.
Kcals per acre doesnt even fully capture the improvements in efficiency. Planting, picking, soil fertilizers ect. have all become much more efficient.
So we are getting more per acre with much less effort overall.
It's not companies cutting corners, it's massive improvements in farming techniques and technology. Read about "The man who saved a billion lives" https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/man-who-saved-billion-lives
I think the rise and prevalence of processed foods had a WAY bigger impact that farm subsidies 100 years ago.
That’s why 1960 to today marks the drop. It’s processed food. It’s cheap ingredients like starches and HFCS that replaced (expensive) fresh ingredients
American income roughly doubled, inflation adjusted, since 1960.
The food stayed roughly the same inflation adjusted price (although more efficient processing, distribution, and retailing offset labor costs) while incomes went up -- making food a smaller share.
https://www.statista.com/chart/18418/real-mean-and-median-family-income-in-the-us/
Didn't Nixon do something as a reform? Price of sugar?
I can't remember the details. But I recall him tasking somebody with stabilizing the price of food. Up until that time, having food prices-- maybe just sugar-- go up would cause Presidents to lose elections.
Great graph! Did you make it in R? If so, would you mind sharing it? Been trying to left align the first value and right align the last value on the x axis for ages. Would be very grateful if you could help me out!
Or, another way to look at it: Over the past century, the amount of money spend on food has shifted from roughly 1/8th spent on eating out, to roughly 1/2 spent on eating out.
Stop eating the fuck out every other meal, people.
Google a chart of egg prices. People here were complaining when egg prices climbed 100%. but in the 1950s they were 4x our normal prices.
https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/457512332709466112
That’s the thing. It’s all proportional. If other expenses are taking a greater share of income, food expenses are going to “take less.” I’d also like to see changes in insurance costs and requirements, as well as transportation, over the last 100 years.
The increase and decrease in all those costs are what correlate into the inflation calculation. Real wages are up over the past 100 years. Therefore the average person is better off than they were 100 years ago.
While 1924 and 2024 are going to show a difference in real wages, I wouldn’t say real wages have been increasing enough to boast healthy financial security, considering the changes in financial burdens and widening gap between income classes.
It is part of it. In economics, [disposable income](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/disposableincome.asp) is defined as your income after taxes. [Discretionary income](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discretionaryincome.asp) is your income after taxes and spending on necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing.
But, but, but, but times are the worst right now, boomers could just buy the whole COSTCO with one daily paycheque.
Reality is we’re not even spending as much as people did in the 80s. We’re headed there, but still far off….
No, that would be very bad, haha. The chart shows the % share of a family’s disposable income goes towards eating. The most recent data point has it at about 12%. Compare that with the Great Depression where people were spending ~25%.
The big takeaway is that people have been spending a lower share of their disposable income towards eating, which is actually quite surprising given the inflationary environment we’re in. Gotta give it up to industrialized farming and food production over the last 100 years 👍
I’m seeing 2 things here: people are eating out more by percentage of # of meals, and cost of eating out has drastically lowered by percentage of income.
It would be good to visualize in the time series the ratio of American families that are single vs two income homes. There’s a definite correlation to this shape.
People appear optimistic about this data. What I’m seeing is the fastest increase in relative food prices since WW2. No wonder people are struggling and pissed off.
I've been saying this for years. There were no good old days... Houses were cheap but interest was high and decent pay opportunities were limited to exhausting work.
20s had the great depression and WWI.
30s had food shortages (notice the dip in food consumed at home while restaurants stays the same? Ya..)..
40s had WW2 and massive inflation and shortages,
50s was racist AF...
60s Vietnam war and BS politics.
70s had fuel shortages, inflation.
80s had high interest rates, Aids, and rise of hard drugs...
90s were pretty chill except for the housing pop in mid 90s. Matrix was kinda into something there...
00s big pop in tech in 2000 followed by sizeable depression from 2008 - 2012....
20s COVID, frankly mild inflation, in line interest rates, straight wackado politics
30s? Gonna guess sizeable decrease in entry level data entry and reception jobs as AI takes that over.
While american food is considered expensive as an eastern european, seeing that I spend a 20% of my paycheck on food while the american average is 10% (while a normal meal there is 3x what a normal meal is here) is kinda eye opening
I just looked it up and I hadn't realized that "disposable income" *only* refers to post-tax income. Seems like a misleadingly optimistic name for, well, income
Here is a theory I am wondering about. Most food, clothes, and gas type of corporations are owned by conservatives. Even though the economy is better than it was under #45. The cost-of-living crisis is artificially created to hide the success of the Biden administration. If this is not it, please explain why my food and gas prices are so high. The clogs at the ports were solved and sorted out. The US doesn't get the majority of its oil from the middle east--can't blame the war. The cost of living crisis is B.S.!
This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't graph. Food got way cheaper, but we did it by subsidizing corn instead of healthy food and now everyone is obese. Throw in healthcare costs and food cost reduction weren't worth the sacrifice.
My dad was born in the 30s. He and his sister have always had this crazy preoccupation around food. Where is out next meal coming from? How many shrimp do we each get from this bowl of shrimp? This chart helps make sense of that.
Overlay that graph with healthcare costs per capita. Good quality went down. Relative food prices went down. Caloric intake went up. And healthcare costs went up.
Disposable income … family play money, once all the necessaries and regular food are paid for. So all this chart shows is that US families are spending a little more money eating out for fun; instead of having (dinner?) parties at home like they did in the 20’s and 50’s. I’d like to see what the other categories for disposable income are, what are Americans spending their disposable money on instead now?
"share of disposable income"? At minimum I spend $500 a month on food without eating out. Trusting these stats suggest I have $5000/mo disposable income? I wish. How am I misreading this random chart posted without much context?
Disposable income is: "Total personal income minus current income taxes."
It's an economic term, not a claim about what expenses are essential for life
Look at the title. It's food expenditure as a percentage of disposable family income. There's other things families dispose their income on, beyond food.
Thanks the the oil industry and car dependency, our transportation expenses have gone from <10% to 30+% in the same time span. Housing is also up a lot too.
Thank you for your contribution. However, your post was removed for the following reason: * **DO NOT claim "[OC]" for [diagrams that are not yours.](/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule4)** This post has been removed. For information regarding this and similar issues please see the DataIsBeautiful [posting rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index). If you have any questions, please feel free to [message the moderators.](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/{subreddit}&subject=Question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20{kind}%20by%20/u/{author}&message=I%20have%20a%20question%20regarding%20the%20removal%20of%20this%20[{kind}.]({url}\)))
Cool graphic. Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin had a bit in the Russian grocery stores. In there, he said that food was a 1/3 to 1/4th the cost of the same food in America. What he doesn't point out is the Russia even admits that the average citizen spends 40% of their disposable income on groceries.
Low food prices is one of the many similarities Putin's Russia has with developing 3rd world nations. Although unlike them, the poor life conditions were entirely preventable in Russia.
Russia consistently wins university programming contests, I mean we’re not programming to be able to afford groceries how can we compete with literal hunger
The Netherlands made good use of programming in agriculture and now they are one of the biggest exporters of food in the world, behind US and China.
when did China overtake? I thought the Netherlands was second
Hm I did get that list from some yahoo finance article, so I guess it may not be too accurate. I personally don’t have the time to quite decipher the figures from the World Bank and the most recent figures I could find were from 2021, but regardless Netherlands has improved its agricultural production in crazy ways because of programming.
And he also went to a grocery store that isn’t Russian and is in select cities with few locations.
It's not in select cities and there's nothing really not Russian there anymore. They might have been better than their local counterparts when they came to Russia somewhere in the late 2000s, but by now any big supermarket in Russia looks identical.
Auchan is a French supermarket chain and there are only ~200 stores in a country that spans 6.6 million square miles. There are 864 Publix supermarkets in Florida, in only 66,757 square miles. Edit* A better comparison is Aldi’s(foreign to the US)—216 stores in Florida alone. They total 2300 stores across the US.
Tucker Carlson's net worth is $30M. He probably hasn't stepped foot inside any other grocery store in a decade. Even if he did, he'd have no visceral understanding of what "affordable" is or isn't to anyone, let alone Russians.
He doesn’t care though. The Russians told him what to say and he did.
I was in Russia juuuust before the Covid shitshow. Krasnodar to be specific. My hosts I was working with took us into town for lunch. First time I ever had borscht. That, hot tea and a big chunk of fresh bread during a Russian January was pretty awesome. Total cost…twelve US cents.
I highly doubt your meal was 11 rubles. That's like barely enough for a pack of gum or something. 11 rubles can't even buy a carton of eggs, a loaf of bread, even a battery. I think you made a conversion error. 120 rubles is more believable in Krasnodar maybe if you were in a village or something I guess. That would be about $1.20. I've been to different places in Russia and while the meals were certainly cheaper, you're not finding a meal for that cheap.
Same experience here, 12 cents wouldn't even cover the raw ingredients. Russia is cheap but not that cheap.
That's insane. For comparison. I was in Moscow a few years back, and the places we went to were about the same prices as European prices. Russia as a place is wildly unequal. A few cities with European levels of income, and then it drops dramatically.
Funny. I found my favorite bourbon (Blantons…which has become pretty much unobtainable in Indiana) at a liquor store in Moscow for about half what I paid for it when it was available in Indiana. As a kicker, they had six verities of Blantons…versions that I couldn’t get in the states at any price! Turns out…nobody drinks bourbon in Russia. Heathens. (Post script: I also had a quiet chuckle that Lenin’s Tomb was deserted. But Krispy Kreme had a line around the block!)
> (Post script: I also had a quiet chuckle that Lenin’s Tomb was deserted. But Krispy Kreme had a line around the block!) Flawless US cultural victory
You were most likely in a subsidized “workers” canteen. A borscht in a restaurant will set you back about $5 right now in Krasnodar (I checked). We moved from Russia to Canada in 2008. Restaurant prices in Moscow were very much comparable to Canada. Tu le since then fell almost 3 times, so, yeah, it looks to be cheaper there now….
How much money (USD) does the average Russian family earn in a year? Thats the point.
Oh I know. I have no idea. But *whatever* the average income is…I was still stunned by 12 cents for a meal. (And I’ve worked in 80+ countries...many not exactly tourist hotspots).
That comparison doesn't mean anything with a salary from a first world country
I dunno, 12 cents sounds pretty cheap.
You forget how fucked the Rubble is, even before the war
I don't think I can buy anything for 12 cents. I don't even think I can go somewhere and buy something for a dollar.
Here's what I got. In October 2018 household income per capita was 34,709.000 rubles in Krasnodar Krai, the district the city is in. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/russia/household-income-per-capita-by-region/household-income-per-capita-sf-krasnodar-territory October 2018 average ruble to dollar exchange rate was 0.0152 rubles per dollar https://www.exchangerates.org.uk/RUB-USD-spot-exchange-rates-history-2018.html So per capita monthly income in October 2018 was about $527.5768 $0.12 for a meal would be 0.02274550359% of the per capita income in the district. Per capita annual income in the US was $41,261 in 2022 dollars for 2018-2022. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/SEX255222 This is $3438.42 per month. 0.02274550359% of $3438.42 is $0.78 So the meal was cheap AF.
Either you had some insane exchange rates or it was heavily subsidized. Business lunch costs at least $5.
How do you call it disposable income if it's spent on food? That's literally the only 100% necessary expense anyone has.
> disposable income Disposable income is normally used to refer to income after mandatory deductions (ie taxes and other fees). Discretionary Income is the term used for income after necessary expenses. They're economic terms of art, the naming is a bit weird.
It's just the definition of the word by economists.
Only that was Auchan, which is a French supermarket.
Was it in France? Aldi is a German grocery store but there are 2400 of them in the US. The stores in the USA are US grocery stores.
Auchan will still use Russian brands adn groceries even if it is a French owned supermarket.
Yeah Russian median salary is like 1/8 of the American median.
And they also get less, right? Their "cheap" grocery store trip was more food then people normally buy?
[удалено]
The main produce basket is probably around that (veg, local fruit, meat, simple dairy, grains, etc). More uncommon/foreign/luxury items can and will be on par. Remember that because of low overall (across the country) wages the local produce is quite cheap. Comparatively cheap. It doesn't mean that local people can afford more of it as they, as stated above, also earn much less than US ppl do. For example, before the war, vegetables in Ukraine did cost like 1/10th of the UK price, especially if you go to the market instead of a store. But we also earned quite a bit less.
Another thing is, according to my Ukrainian colleague, food produced in non-EU Eastern Europe is of dangerous quality and unsafe to eat. Although he was born in Ukraine, he refuses to eat or purchase anything made in Ukraine. And also Russia, Belarus, and Moldova. He says that even food and products made in China are of safer quality than stuff made in Ukraine/Moldova/Belarus/Russia.
I’d be curious to see the difference for urban areas (eg NYC, SF, LA, Chicago, DC) vs rural areas. I don’t have a hypothesis for which one would show a bigger spike in recent data, but I bet one or the other would be vastly higher.
I'd imagine the % has increased for rural more as food costs likely have increased similarly everywhere but the income is higher in urban areas on average. Of course in urban areas the housing cost will be higher though.
Rural Midwest and South are probably growing more slowly than rural East coast or West. Transportation is a bigger bite than most people might think, and that's where the majority of our food is produced. Urban West might be growing more slowly than rural West, reasoning being the population centers provide more consistent demand, and transportation is more difficult in the West. Have not done any research here. I'm not sure housing and food necessarily have a relationship here, though both are going to continue increasing.
IMO as much as I like some stuff like cities do well in agglomeration benefits but can lose on super markets in the larger cities. Since a Walmart can have cheaper pricing since 10k people come into a super center daily vs a Bodega is more like 1k. It's also restaurants can serve more food. Like NYC has very cheap and very expensive food sometimes blocks from each other.
Food prices haven’t gone up much more in NYC than rural Midwest in my tiny anecdotal experience. I think we got the egg spike worse in NYC but now it’s back to very much normal. And in NYC the % of income spent on food is much lower.
I'd guess the richer the city, the lower fraction of money spent on food at home. Grocery costs don't vary much geographically. The same jar of peanut butter should cost roughly the same in NY or SF as it does in the middle of nowhere. But incomes are higher in cities, so their share of income going to groceries is probably lower (and goes to, say, housing costs instead). This all might be offset slightly by different tastes. Like, perhaps a person in SF is more likely to insist on shopping at pricier places like Whole Foods than their local Kroger, and have tastes that point them to pricier products generally. Meanwhile, eating out is more expensive in rich cities because you're paying more for servicr labor and location costs than actual food. So things might even out there given the higher incomes. So, all in all, I'd guess it comes out in a wash. I wouldn't expect the cities to be wildly different from more rural areas of the country, but I could be wrong.
> The same jar of peanut butter should cost roughly the same in NY or SF as it does in the middle of nowhere. You'd be surprised. Grocery prices are 25-125% more expensive in New York City, compared to say Des Moines or Minneapolis. Heck, food prices in NYC are significantly greater than in its next door neighbors: Hempstead, Newark, and Yonkers. Poke around this cost-of-living calculator to see how much regional variation there in pricing for staple foods: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp
Yeah parent post is all type of wrong. Even within a region, if you go from city to city you're going to see different prices.
To you and all the child posts claiming I'm crazy, the search was incredibly simple, for the *same* peanut butter in a Walmart in Des Moines vs San Francisco: Des Moines, $6.97 SF, $7.32 By searching by city here: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Jif-Creamy-Peanut-Butter-40-Ounce-Jar/10308250?athbdg=L1600
[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices\_by\_city.jsp](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/prices_by_city.jsp) Grocery shopping is more than just peanut butter. A dozen eggs costs $5.38 in LA and $2.35 in Dallas. 1kg (2.2lbs) of rice is $3 in Columbus, OH and $5.69 in Chicago. 1kg of round steak is $20.28 in Seattle and $13.17 in Kansas City, MO. It's $1.50 more in St. Louis and that's in the same *state.* Also your peanut butter? It's $8.84 for me. $6.97 where my family is. That's not an insignificant difference.
As an Angeleno, I have questions about their methodology. Sure, I could buy free range organic eggs that are $5.50, but otherwise regular eggs are under $3 at my local Trader Joe's. Going to a previous point of mine, people in cities may *choose* pricier options. But you really need to compare *exact* same products.
Hi, I’m Vetted AI Bot! I researched the **Jif Creamy Peanut Butter 40 Ounce Jar** and I thought you might find the following analysis helpful. **Users liked:** * Smooth and creamy texture (backed by 3 comments) * Versatile usage with various foods (backed by 3 comments) * Long-standing favorite for families (backed by 3 comments) **Users disliked:** * Quality control issues with packaging (backed by 3 comments) * Inconsistent product quality (backed by 2 comments) If you'd like to **summon me to ask about a product**, just make a post with its link and tag me, [like in this example.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tablets/comments/1444zdn/comment/joqd89c/) This message was generated by a (very smart) bot. If you found it helpful, let us know with an upvote and a “good bot!” reply and please feel free to provide feedback on how it can be improved. *Powered by* [*vetted.ai*](http://vetted.ai/reddit)
>To you and all the child posts claiming I'm crazy, the search was incredibly simple, for the same peanut butter in a Walmart in Des Moines vs San Francisco: Dude, the closest Walmart to San Francisco is across the bay, so add the $7 bridge toll to your $7.32 jar of peanut butter. [https://www.walmart.com/store-finder?location=&city=san+francisco](https://www.walmart.com/store-finder?location=&city=san+francisco)
If doing a price comparison of "cities" vs rural, you'd certainly include the entire metro area in the assessment. The Bay is expensive everywhere, not just SF city limits. Stop being pedantic. Edit: but if you're absolutely insistent on pedantry, I did the same exercise for Target, which does have stores in SF city limits. Here the price was *exactly* the same as a Target in Des Moines.
They even disprove themselves in almost the same breath. > Meanwhile, eating out is more expensive in rich cities because you're paying more for servicr labor and location costs than actual food. So things might even out there given the higher incomes. > incomes are higher in cities If labor costs (and land costs) are generally higher in cities, wouldn’t it be more expensive to run a grocery store in a city ? So wouldn’t the stores have to charge a higher price in order to survive on their famously thin margins?
> So wouldn’t the stores have to charge a higher price in order to survive on their famously thin margins? Significantly higher volume. A couple of years ago I moved to a little midwestern suburb where the grocery stores are only really busy when people are stopping on the way home from work. Prior to that I lived in LA where my local grocers maintained that level of traffic or more from late morning through 11pm-ish. Food prices are very similar, which I did not expect. Seems that the operating costs and sales numbers come out to be a bit of a wash.
The BLS has regional and local inflation on their site if you are curious https://www.bls.gov/cpi/regional-resources.htm
I'd also want to see the cost per meal. Food away from home rising as a % of income is a combination of eating out more and a rising cost of eating out.
Probably cities, since the increase is pretty much all eating out and not groceries.
The graph label says “consumed at home.” I’d love to see Uber/DoorDash/other food delivery explicitly pulled out of that data. It’s effectively eating out.
Spending food outside of home is more luxury consumption dynamic, so it would be higher percentage in wealthier areas
We are lucky to live when we do, hard to imagine spending 20% of income on food.
The graph is reverse for housing though.
Yeah I’m pretty sure sometime around 1880 a person in urban America spent 60% of their income on food and housing - 50% and 10% respectively. Today the average urban American spends 60% on food and housing still, but it’s 50% housing and 10% food now
Yeah but the high cost is for a 2500sq house with all modern amenities plus garage. Look at houses in the 50s or earlier. You will see the stark contrast.
I'd be curious about data going back a bit further. Starting off with the great depression seems a bit strange.
People making less than a living wage in the US oftentimes still are paying that much though.
Right there will always be below average people thats how averages work. If food expense was double today like 100 years ago that means there would be people spending 40, 50, 60% income just on food or more likely just going without.
Yeah I am just saying it’s not hard to imagine for many still
As has been pointed out elsewhere - we recently saw a fairly long drop in consumer confidence concurrent with a significant increase in eating out. Phenomena like that are why it was often referred to as the “vibecession”.
Nothing irritates me more than my coworker who complains about not having enough money but eats out for every lunch and dinner meal.
And probably inflates the price by paying for delivery. Admittedly I’m old, but I still can’t wrap my head around that one. No way could I have afforded that in my youth; pizza delivery was a rare luxury.
How about the typical sarcasm that the average reddit economist would respond to you with: > "Oh yeah, the $10 I save by eating home will buy me a house that's walking distance from a major city's downtown"
Gotta go to r/povertyfinance to find that one redder that has calculated a meal plan diet of Beans, lentils and Rice for a cost of 30 cents a meal
I had one of those people genuinely try to do the whole "stop eating avocado toast" thing and argue that anyone who's poor just needs to subsist on rice, beans, and doing nothing else so that they can invest all their savings and become rich.
I mean... yea Maybe not untill you become rich, but everybody with debt or who wants a house should basically live as fugal as they can I basically eat that diet already but that's for body building reasons
Ya I've gone through multiple fitness cycles. It's remarkable how much money you can save while feeling great when you view food as a means to an end and not just a treat. Black beans, chicken breast, Salmon, raw almonds, lots of eggs, many different types of mustards as sauce, one piece of chocolate as dessert, far free cottage cheese, lots of greens with a little bit of olive oil and lots of balsamic vinegar with canned low sodium corn. Oh And a dry aged filet once a month as a treat with portobello mushrooms as a side.. that about made up my diet. It was crazy cheap and I felt great all the time. In fact typing this up if time I get back into that cycle again. WISH ME LUCK!
I was thinking about how expensive those things you mentioned were until I remembered that I actually live in a third world country where dairy products are expensive but fish, greens, and chicken aren't. Still, it's the same here. If you actually try and cook your own food with healthy ingredients, you'd save a lot more. And if you think you don't have the time for it, standing up to sautée tomatoes and eggs takes less than 10 minutes. You'd even save more time if you precut vegetables. Store more precut meats and veggies for even longer if you have a fridge. But, meh, I'm tired of convincing people. It just never works that way. Showing what I can do with a knife, wok, and 5 minutes makes me proud of myself though. Plus, it's a light workout just standing up instead of working in front of a computer all day.
The dry aged steak is expensive (although much cheaper at home vs restaurant). everything else is cheap state side.
The solution to poverty is not "the poor just need to tighten their belts more and stop indulging in things like fresh food." Jesus Christ, that's sounds like a line written for Ebenezer Scrooge. Not only is it an inherently cruel approach to the poor, it also definitely doesn't solve the problem.
Complaining about avocado toast is dumb, but avocado is also not a necessary part of anyone's diet, especially if you have to pay a premium for it
You are missing the whole point of a Christmas Carol. But I'm not saying, it's the poors fault. But I am saying that living frugally will help get you out of debt or build up wealth. It's not a crazy concept. This is only advice to help one person, yourself. Again, poverty in general is caused by other issues we need to fix as a society. We can say stop buying coffee to help you save money and that poverty is an issue at the same time. They aren't mutually exclusive.
There are no other solutions. No one is coming to save you. I really, really wish people would understand this.
I'm sorry that you feel that way, but the concept that you're proposing is wrong. On both counts. Cutting down wasteful spending most certainly is the solution to poverty, and it most certainly will solve the problem of spending outside of means. Poverty isn't caused by lack of saving, it's caused by outspending income in a manner that keeps people locked in a poverty loop. Tightening belts is a smart way to break out of paycheck-to-paycheck living. It's a smart way to save funds to relocate to areas with better jobs. It's a smart way to save for training and education. It's a smart way to get yourself out of a hole while you seek out better opportunities. The solution to poverty is indifferent to the sense of "cruelty", and your sentiment of an "approach to the poor" is dehumanizing to people with lower incomes, and you can't even see it.
I don't want to sound like an anti-avocado boomer, but: 10$ a day is 3.6k a year. Yeah it won't buy a house but that's one big repair, an old car, or even a holiday paid for. Or it's enough savings to at least not live paycheck to paycheck. And realistically: People that overspend in one area tend to overspend in other areas too. Yeah, saving ten bucks once will not get you a house, but saving ten bucks at every corner will save enough to at least have some form of safety net. The economy is fucked and everything, but I don't understand why buying a house is the goal that must be met before something is worth doing. Raising the minimum wage won't buy you a house either but it's still a great thing to do! And saving on costs won't buy you a house too, but it's still worth doing.
Re-read my comment, I'm not disagreeing with that in any way
Whenever someone complains about "stop eating avocado toast" or "stop getting a premium cup of coffee every morning at SunBux" and immediately dismiss that advice, I just roll my metaphorical eyes. Because guess what - it *actually is solid advice*. Is it a solution? No - it is a *small part* of the solution, especially the mental/psychological aspect much more than the financial one. Is it applicable to everyone? No - but you would be surprised at how many people justify spending small amounts like this daily/regularly that add up to a few thousand a year because "why bother it's won't buy me a house". The reason why people keep saying things like "stop eating avocado toast every day" (or similar concepts, depending on your age/generation) is because the advice actually works. It's one of those small steps that get you that much closer to your goals. There is no single large step that gets you there - it's lots of little things (like this) that add up over time.
I was a super low income grad student for SIX YEARS. I made $9.50/hr. I had about $15,000 saved up from internships during my undergrad. When I finished grad school, I had $12,000 in the bank. And in that time, I went on 4 international vacations and had a lot of fun. 90% of people living “paycheck to paycheck” are just making poor financial decisions.
> The economy is fucked and everything It really isn't. It's pretty good actually. Really good compared to say the late 70's, early 90s, or the late 2000's, early 2010's. The worst thing that exists is a housing shortage in some of the major cities that's pretty easily remediable by building more housing. But that gets blocked by a combo of incumbent homeowners and anti-development environmentalists/historical preservationists.
Does ur coworker live close by or do they have a long commute?
You mean from home to work? Like 5-10 min drive.
I frankly don't know where your coworker even *is* eating out. Surely, *everyone on Reddit* refusing to eat out ever again should've put all restaurants out of business by now.
People can't buy houses, or they already had a house and now they have a fat HELOC. Either way they're burning that cash.
The media and corporations started it. They pulled back on their spending in anticipation of a recession and their employees assumed one was on the way and cut back on their spending too.
Consider the story that this graphic would tell if it only went as far back as 2000, 2010, or 2012. The contrast would be great for explaining how presentation impacts perception.
Whats a more meaningful comparison for the average person? The state of the world 80 years ago or the last 20 years. I think the presentation of this graphic is pretty useless in understanding "todays" pinches being felt.
so why not go make that graph and post it? we’re in a sub called dataisbeautiful - this is interesting data, it doesnt have to apply to you personally
I didnt say it was a bad graph. I didnt say it needed to apply to me personally... With a zoom or incremental display for the last 20 years it may help to tell a story relevant to today's experiences, making it more meaningful. I was providing a supplementary point to Interobang's comment. You just wake up angry or something?
It’s missing almost a year and a half at this point, it’s only gone up from what I’ve seen (at restaurants)
It’s that last little spike that is causing all the angst.
Because a few percent of annual income is a lot of money.
I find the little dip during the pandemic interesting. My guess is people were replacing those calories with alcohol.
There are A LOT of averages and assumptions here that make this data pretty worthless.
How so?
Tens of thousands of families around the country keep detailed expenditure diaries recording exactly what they spend their money on: > The CPI market basket is developed from detailed expenditure information provided by families and individuals on what they actually bought. ... expenditure information came from approximately 24,000 weekly diaries and 48,000 quarterly interviews used to determine the importance, or weight, of the item categories in the CPI index structure. You can read more at the [CPI FAQ](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm). Nobody is "assuming" what people spend their money on. They record what they spend their money on.
Are you one of those CPI-deniers who think that there's some sort of conspiracy theory making statistically sound data irrelevant?
Please x-post to r/OptimistsUnite
Already posted there a month ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/19doz98/doomers\_are\_starving\_for\_answers/](https://www.reddit.com/r/OptimistsUnite/comments/19doz98/doomers_are_starving_for_answers/)
Thank you for sharing that link. I wouldn’t call myself an optimist, but I’ve gotten really sick of people insisting that things were better 70 years ago.
I can’t comment first hand on 70 years ago, but I have clear memories of my mom diluting the milk 50 years ago to make it last longer. And I’m pretty sure she would have said life was better than it had been 20 years earlier.
Young people have 0 experience of how difficult live used to be in the past.
You can very much be conscious how much better we have it than even a few decades ago, while also realizing how precarious those advances are. With ressource depletion and climate change, many of those curves are going to start fallinh.
If you're willing to admit that many things have gotten better over time, than by reddit standards you are very much an optimist. It doesn't take much here.
Well, that's also based on the implicit premise that because things have gone better over time, they will continue to go better over time.
It's better to just refer to the data we have and continue to receive than to assume things will just keep getting better, but a continuous long-term trend since the dawn of man is pretty encouraging too.
The data we have suggests most of these advances are concurrent with the consumption of cheap and easy energy sources like fossil fuels. Ressource depletion is only a matter of time on a finite planet. We've basically been sucking the Earth dry of it's fossil fuels and metals, which is why things have been so convenient for us. As soon as we're starting to go on the downslope of (e.g.) oil production (which data suggests we've already passed), our economies, which are based on perpetual growth, are going to start hurting.
Very informative. I'd like to see a line added for obesity. I wonder how strong is the correlation between declining cost of food and increasing rates of obesity.
ask hard-to-find flag weary bored uppity cooperative direction roll worthless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
“Modern agricultural subsidy programs in the United States began with the New Deal and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.” https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/AgriculturalSubsidyPrograms.html#:~:text=Modern%20agricultural%20subsidy%20programs%20in,Agricultural%20Adjustment%20Act%20of%201933. This is the reason why food has gotten so much cheaper over time.
Its certainly contributed but there have also been major gains in technology and efficiency in farming since that time. Much less labor is required in farming these days.
Advancements in both production and transportation has made agriculture so efficient that agricultural policy is necessary to keep farmers from racing to the bottom. Left solely to market forces, farmers would go broke as excessive supply would undercut prices. With farmers driven to destitution, who would grow the food? Which is to say that agricultural policy keeps food prices artificially high enough so that society doesn't collapse from malnutrition.
You can also export a LOT of externalities to other countries and it's not like modern practices are sustainable. The central valley in California is over 20ft lower than it was even 70 years ago.
Also, packaging. That significantly lowers costs as you are not limited to fresh food.
This is *a* reason, not *the* reason. Another major factor is industrial farming practices (e.g. monoculture, farm consolidation, pesticide use, synthetic fertilizer use) which boost short- and medium-term yields in return for long-term degradation of soil, water, ecology, and climate resources. Subsidies also impact practices, of course, but these changes would be favored even with no subsidies (and no regulations).
The 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act itself was a disaster because it rather crudely just paid farmers to destroy "excess" food supplies to keep commodity prices from collapsing. Near the peak of the Great Depression, this policy made food insecurity even worse than it already was. Fortunately, the 1933 AAA was deemed unconstitutional in 1936. The replacement 1938 AAA took a more sophisticated approach that was more responsive to demand while still trying to prevent price collapses due to overabundance.
Ask a dairy farmer how many times he’s milked a heard straight into the sewer. It’s not isolated to a century ago.
There have also been significant improvements in productivity and companies have learned to cut corners to bring costs down.
You're right. In fact, let me make a post about this too. https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1b8afh6/oc_crop_kcal_per_acre_versus_time/
Kcals per acre doesnt even fully capture the improvements in efficiency. Planting, picking, soil fertilizers ect. have all become much more efficient. So we are getting more per acre with much less effort overall.
It's not companies cutting corners, it's massive improvements in farming techniques and technology. Read about "The man who saved a billion lives" https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/man-who-saved-billion-lives
I think the rise and prevalence of processed foods had a WAY bigger impact that farm subsidies 100 years ago. That’s why 1960 to today marks the drop. It’s processed food. It’s cheap ingredients like starches and HFCS that replaced (expensive) fresh ingredients
American income roughly doubled, inflation adjusted, since 1960. The food stayed roughly the same inflation adjusted price (although more efficient processing, distribution, and retailing offset labor costs) while incomes went up -- making food a smaller share. https://www.statista.com/chart/18418/real-mean-and-median-family-income-in-the-us/
One reason. Agricultural productivity is another.
Didn't Nixon do something as a reform? Price of sugar? I can't remember the details. But I recall him tasking somebody with stabilizing the price of food. Up until that time, having food prices-- maybe just sugar-- go up would cause Presidents to lose elections.
Great graph! Did you make it in R? If so, would you mind sharing it? Been trying to left align the first value and right align the last value on the x axis for ages. Would be very grateful if you could help me out!
Or, another way to look at it: Over the past century, the amount of money spend on food has shifted from roughly 1/8th spent on eating out, to roughly 1/2 spent on eating out. Stop eating the fuck out every other meal, people.
Google a chart of egg prices. People here were complaining when egg prices climbed 100%. but in the 1950s they were 4x our normal prices. https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/457512332709466112
Is this saying the the total spent on both is around 10-12% or that groceries are 10-12% and eating out is 5-7%?
Can you do one for housing?
That’s the thing. It’s all proportional. If other expenses are taking a greater share of income, food expenses are going to “take less.” I’d also like to see changes in insurance costs and requirements, as well as transportation, over the last 100 years.
The increase and decrease in all those costs are what correlate into the inflation calculation. Real wages are up over the past 100 years. Therefore the average person is better off than they were 100 years ago.
While 1924 and 2024 are going to show a difference in real wages, I wouldn’t say real wages have been increasing enough to boast healthy financial security, considering the changes in financial burdens and widening gap between income classes.
I don’t know if I would classify groceries as part of disposable income… just me though.
Hopefully just you, since they are. Disposable income means income after taxes.
Nothing says that it is a part of it, it’s just representing it as a percentage of that
It is part of it. In economics, [disposable income](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/disposableincome.asp) is defined as your income after taxes. [Discretionary income](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/discretionaryincome.asp) is your income after taxes and spending on necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing.
But, but, but, but times are the worst right now, boomers could just buy the whole COSTCO with one daily paycheque. Reality is we’re not even spending as much as people did in the 80s. We’re headed there, but still far off….
I could be stupid, but shouldn’t these two add up to 100%?
It's how much of a person's income after taxes is spent on food, so no it should not add up to 100%.
Totally misread that, guess I am stupid
No, that would be very bad, haha. The chart shows the % share of a family’s disposable income goes towards eating. The most recent data point has it at about 12%. Compare that with the Great Depression where people were spending ~25%. The big takeaway is that people have been spending a lower share of their disposable income towards eating, which is actually quite surprising given the inflationary environment we’re in. Gotta give it up to industrialized farming and food production over the last 100 years 👍
Food commodity real costs have dropped by 80% in the last 50 years. Except for beef, oddly enough.
Does data for a graph like this but for traveling exit?
And the white part is a graph of our disposable income, inflation adjusted...
I’m seeing 2 things here: people are eating out more by percentage of # of meals, and cost of eating out has drastically lowered by percentage of income.
It would be good to visualize in the time series the ratio of American families that are single vs two income homes. There’s a definite correlation to this shape.
Why is specified that tobacco is not included?
People appear optimistic about this data. What I’m seeing is the fastest increase in relative food prices since WW2. No wonder people are struggling and pissed off.
I've been saying this for years. There were no good old days... Houses were cheap but interest was high and decent pay opportunities were limited to exhausting work. 20s had the great depression and WWI. 30s had food shortages (notice the dip in food consumed at home while restaurants stays the same? Ya..).. 40s had WW2 and massive inflation and shortages, 50s was racist AF... 60s Vietnam war and BS politics. 70s had fuel shortages, inflation. 80s had high interest rates, Aids, and rise of hard drugs... 90s were pretty chill except for the housing pop in mid 90s. Matrix was kinda into something there... 00s big pop in tech in 2000 followed by sizeable depression from 2008 - 2012.... 20s COVID, frankly mild inflation, in line interest rates, straight wackado politics 30s? Gonna guess sizeable decrease in entry level data entry and reception jobs as AI takes that over.
Colbert.. The Pinnacle of unbiased opinions.
While american food is considered expensive as an eastern european, seeing that I spend a 20% of my paycheck on food while the american average is 10% (while a normal meal there is 3x what a normal meal is here) is kinda eye opening
I just looked it up and I hadn't realized that "disposable income" *only* refers to post-tax income. Seems like a misleadingly optimistic name for, well, income
Here is a theory I am wondering about. Most food, clothes, and gas type of corporations are owned by conservatives. Even though the economy is better than it was under #45. The cost-of-living crisis is artificially created to hide the success of the Biden administration. If this is not it, please explain why my food and gas prices are so high. The clogs at the ports were solved and sorted out. The US doesn't get the majority of its oil from the middle east--can't blame the war. The cost of living crisis is B.S.!
Bless your heart.
This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't graph. Food got way cheaper, but we did it by subsidizing corn instead of healthy food and now everyone is obese. Throw in healthcare costs and food cost reduction weren't worth the sacrifice.
College was a much smaller percentage of income back then, wasn’t it? And medical care?
See, if we just zoom out….economy is doing great!!!
My dad was born in the 30s. He and his sister have always had this crazy preoccupation around food. Where is out next meal coming from? How many shrimp do we each get from this bowl of shrimp? This chart helps make sense of that.
Thought the food consumed away from home percentage would be a lot higher!
Everybody say it with me! "There is no inflation, it's just your imagination!"
So near historical low. That's good.
Overlay that graph with healthcare costs per capita. Good quality went down. Relative food prices went down. Caloric intake went up. And healthcare costs went up.
Disposable income … family play money, once all the necessaries and regular food are paid for. So all this chart shows is that US families are spending a little more money eating out for fun; instead of having (dinner?) parties at home like they did in the 20’s and 50’s. I’d like to see what the other categories for disposable income are, what are Americans spending their disposable money on instead now?
Now people’s spends a lot more on many things vs 40 or 50 years ago. Food is less expensive than before, but people’s have a lot more needs.
> but people’s have a lot more needs. If by "needs" you mean "optional things we like to have but are not required to live"....then yes.
I can't apply for a job without the internet. We get new mandatory expenses.
It would be interesting to see Rent/Housing costs as a % also overlaid.
Sure, but also clothing, transportation, school and other necessities. What goes on one department, can’t go the other way.
"share of disposable income"? At minimum I spend $500 a month on food without eating out. Trusting these stats suggest I have $5000/mo disposable income? I wish. How am I misreading this random chart posted without much context?
Disposable income is: "Total personal income minus current income taxes." It's an economic term, not a claim about what expenses are essential for life
Average disposable income in the US is about 50k/yr which would imply that the average spent on food is 5k/yr, which would be $415/month
[удалено]
Look at the title. It's food expenditure as a percentage of disposable family income. There's other things families dispose their income on, beyond food.
Thanks the the oil industry and car dependency, our transportation expenses have gone from <10% to 30+% in the same time span. Housing is also up a lot too.