{"id":37765,"date":"2024-10-11T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-11T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=37765"},"modified":"2024-10-27T17:16:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-27T17:16:22","slug":"if-you-think-grocery-prices-take-a-big-bite-out-of-your-paycheck-in-the-us-check-out-the-rest-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/if-you-think-grocery-prices-take-a-big-bite-out-of-your-paycheck-in-the-us-check-out-the-rest-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"If you think grocery prices take a big bite out of your paycheck in the US, check out the rest of the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Peter A. Coclanis<\/a>, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though cynics may question her motives<\/a>, Kamala Harris\u2019 recent call to ban price gouging on groceries<\/a> has received a lot of attention \u2013 and for good reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cost of food has been a big concern for Americans since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with U.S. food prices rising 25%<\/a> between 2019 and 2023. While U.S. food inflation slowed considerably<\/a> in 2024, grocery prices are still up from prepandemic numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Price hikes like this are as painful as they are aggravating, and they can have real effects on both household spending and the broader economy. So it\u2019s not surprising that the topic is coming up on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But oftentimes, complexity can get lost amid the politicking. Here, economic history \u2013 and economic historians<\/a> like me \u2013 can provide some context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Americans spend their food dollars<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For starters, despite the run-up in food prices in the U.S., there\u2019s little evidence<\/a> of price gouging in the grocery industry today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPrice gouging\u201d is notoriously difficult to define, but the term is usually invoked after a supply or demand shock of some kind, when sellers are said to take advantage and jack up prices, particularly for basics such as food or gasoline. Concern over \u201cgouging\u201d goes way back \u2013 in some ways, it can be seen as an outgrowth of medieval Christian injunctions against mercantile greed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although many states have laws on the books<\/a> against price gouging, such laws have proved difficult to enforce. In the case of the U.S. grocery industry, profit margins \u2014 traditionally razor-thin at about 1% or 2% \u2014 remain small even today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, it\u2019s important to note that food prices in the U.S. \u2014 relatively speaking \u2014 are the cheapest in the world, and have been for a long time. This is the case whether measured in terms of disposable personal income or in terms of percentage of household expenditures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, U.S. Department of Agriculture data shows that in 2023 \u2014 the most recent year for which data are available \u2014 Americans spent about 11.2% of their disposable personal income<\/a> \u2013 or income after taxes \u2013 on food. That was unchanged from 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes expenditures for both food at home \u2014 generally purchased at supermarkets and other grocery stores \u2014 and food purchased \u201caway\u201d at restaurants and the like. Interestingly, the \u201caway\u201d component has been growing as a proportion of total food spending since the onset of COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grocery prices around the world<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

No one likes to pay more for food, but a little comparative data can reduce one\u2019s sense of victimization, if not alleviate the pocketbook pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cross-national data compiled by the USDA shows that in 2022, Americans spent less on food<\/a> as a proportion of total consumer expenditures than people in any other country. People in many other nations spent two, three or four times as much in percentage terms, and sometimes even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The differences were greatest between the U.S. and low-income countries in South Asia and Africa \u2013 Bangladesh, Myanmar and Ethiopia, for example \u2013 but were also quite sizable between the U.S. and middle-income countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China, Costa Rica and Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n