As A Share Of Income, U.S. Has Lowest Food Prices On The Planet

Click on the chart above to enlarge, it shows the “Percent of personal consumption spent on food by selected countries, 2007″ based on data available from the Department of Agriculture.

Notice that spending on food consumed at home in the U.S. is only 5.7% of total household consumption (disposable personal income), by far the lowest in the world, at least for the 71 countries in this study. Spending on food in the EU countries at 12.1% of disposable personal income is more than twice the U.S. rate. Japan’s rate of 14.6% is more than 2.5 times greater than the U.S. and even Canada at 9.2% doesn’t even come close to the U.S.

Russians spent almost 29% of their income on food in 2007, the Chinese 35% and the Indians 32.4%, levels even higher that the U.S. rate of 21.2% in 1930. That is, the average American in 1930 spent less of their disposable income on food than the average person in almost half of the countries list above spent in 2007.

Bottom Line: When it comes to affordable food (as a share of disposable income), there’s no place on the planet where it’s cheaper than the U.S. And it’s gotten better and better over time, as food expenditures in the U.S. have fallen from 21.2% of income in 1930 to only 5.7% in 2007.

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