Food Spending Survey Results
A couple of weeks ago, I asked my readers to share what percent of their disposable income they spent on food. My intent was to double-check the shocking government data on food costs that we recently wrote about here at CK.
You'll recall that the data showed that food costs have fallen dramatically since the 1930s as a percent of disposable income. This data is compelling evidence that despite all the concerns bandied about in the media in recent years about rice shortages, corn shortages and other drivers of food price inflation, in reality our food has never been cheaper.
But I wanted to see what the results were for regular people, and that's why I asked readers to weight in on their spending.
So what were the results? How do CK's measure up compared to the overall US population?
Well, we spend more on food. By at least five percentage points. You'll recall that the median spend on all food was 9.6% according to the government data. CK readers averaged 14.7% (that's a mean--see below for more details on the data). Government figures say that Americans spend 5.6% on food eaten at home. CK readers averaged 9.8%.
I'll admit up front that I expected the numbers to be lower. In fact, I was concerned that they might be misleadingly low, because I thought there might be a "selection bias" in the responses (meaning I figured readers who spent less on food would be more likely to submit their responses, thereby skewing the data downward). Fortunately, I was wrong, and the results were all over the map.
Of course we are all food blog readers, and many of us are food blog writers, so we shouldn't be surprised that many of us take our home cooking seriously. But I figured that the savings of not eating out would compensate. As it turns out, our survey respondents spend slightly more than the government figures on eating out too (5.0% of disposable income, vs national figures of 4.0%).
So much for my assumptions.
You'll recall that the data showed that food costs have fallen dramatically since the 1930s as a percent of disposable income. This data is compelling evidence that despite all the concerns bandied about in the media in recent years about rice shortages, corn shortages and other drivers of food price inflation, in reality our food has never been cheaper.
But I wanted to see what the results were for regular people, and that's why I asked readers to weight in on their spending.
So what were the results? How do CK's measure up compared to the overall US population?
Well, we spend more on food. By at least five percentage points. You'll recall that the median spend on all food was 9.6% according to the government data. CK readers averaged 14.7% (that's a mean--see below for more details on the data). Government figures say that Americans spend 5.6% on food eaten at home. CK readers averaged 9.8%.
I'll admit up front that I expected the numbers to be lower. In fact, I was concerned that they might be misleadingly low, because I thought there might be a "selection bias" in the responses (meaning I figured readers who spent less on food would be more likely to submit their responses, thereby skewing the data downward). Fortunately, I was wrong, and the results were all over the map.
Of course we are all food blog readers, and many of us are food blog writers, so we shouldn't be surprised that many of us take our home cooking seriously. But I figured that the savings of not eating out would compensate. As it turns out, our survey respondents spend slightly more than the government figures on eating out too (5.0% of disposable income, vs national figures of 4.0%).
So much for my assumptions.
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