As a Share of Household Spending, U.S. Has Most Affordable Food in World & It's Never Been Better

We hear reports all the time that real household incomes are stagnant or falling, the middle class is disappearing, household wealth has declined, and income inequality is rising.  All of those reports might make one think that the standard of living for the average American is bad and getting worse.  But here's one basic measure of a country's standard of living that shows Americans are better off than their consumer counterparts anywhere in the world: The share of household consumption expenditure on food consumed at home, see table below (USDA data here).  

Relative to our total household spending, Americans have the cheapest food on the planet - only 6.6% of the average household budget goes to food consumed at home.  European countries like Spain, France and Norway spend twice that amount on food as a share of total expenditures, and consumers in countries like Turkey, China and Mexico spend three times as much of their budgets on food as Americans.  

Another measure of food affordability, total food expenditures in the U.S. as a share of disposable income (see chart above, USDA data here), shows that food has become more affordable in the U.S. over time.  Spending on food has fallen from more than 25% of the average American's income in 1933 to only 9.4% in 2010, an all-time low.  Between 1980 and 2010, the share of disposable income spent on food in the U.S. fell from 13.2% to 9.4%, which is equivalent to almost a 4% increase in the average American's disposable income over the last 30 years.   And a number of countries in the list below spend more on food as a share of household expenditures today than Americans spent on food during the Great Depression. 

Bottom Line: As a share of our disposable income, food in the U.S. has never been cheaper than it was in 2010 (more recent data are not yet available).  And Americans spend less on food as a share of our household expenditures than consumers anywhere else in the world.   

Share of Household Spending     on Food, 2010	%
United States	6.6
Singapore	7.5
United Kingdom	9.7
Canada	9.8
Ireland	10.2
Switzerland	10.3
Australia	10.7
Germany	11.0
Austria	11.1
Denmark	11.5
Netherlands	11.6
Hong Kong, China	12.1
Finland	12.5
Qatar	12.5
Sweden	12.6
Belgium	12.7
Spain	13.1
France	13.2
Norway	13.4
Malaysia	13.9
Bahrain	14.3
Kuwait	14.5
United Arab Emirates	14.5
Japan	14.8
Italy	14.8
Slovenia	14.9
South Korea	15.0
New Zealand	15.0
Portugal	15.6
Czech Republic	16.0
Greece	17.3
Latvia	17.5
Israel	17.6
Ecuador	17.8
Slovakia	17.9
Hungary	17.9
Uruguay	18.6
Colombia	18.8
South Africa	19.6
Poland	20.2
Argentina	20.2
Estonia	20.3
Bulgaria	21.3
Turkey	21.4
Lithuania	21.7
China	22.3
Mexico	22.7
Croatia	23.2
Chile	23.2
Costa Rica	23.4
Iran	23.4
Saudi Arabia	23.7
Taiwan	23.9
Brazil	24.8
Thailand	25.0
Dominican Republic	25.1
Turkmenistan	25.8
India	27.7
Bolivia	28.0
Venezuela	28.9
Peru	28.9
Russia	29.0
Romania	29.7
Uzbekistan	31.4
Indonesia	32.2
Bosnia-Herzegovina	32.7
Macedonia	32.9
Tunisia	35.6
Kazakhstan	35.9
Philippines	36.4
Egypt	38.0
Guatemala	38.0
Vietnam	38.0
Nigeria	39.8
Morocco	40.5
Jordan	40.6
Georgia	41.3
Ukraine	41.7
Kenya	41.7
Pakistan	41.9
Belarus	42.1
Algeria	43.7
Azerbaijan	45.3
Cameroon	46.9