ABOUT THE DASHBOARD

The Consumer Food Expenditures dashboard provides insight into consumer spending by year and by household income. The “Food Expenditures by Year” tab provides household food spending per year and spending share of total income based on a selection of food categories and quintiles of income. The “Food Expenditures by Household Income” tab provides “Food Category” and “Year” as selections to analyze household food spending and spending share of total income per year.

HOW TO USE IT

The dashboard has two tabs — “Food Expenditures by Year” and “Food Expenditures by Household Income.” For “Food Expenditures by Year,” select the food category and income quintiles to explore food spending and the spending share of total income by year. The second tab “Food Expenditures by Household Income” gives you the choice of food category and year to analyze food spending trends by household income and spending share of total income by household income.  

VARIABLE DEFINITIONS

Food Category: List of food categories. 

Quintiles of Income: Lowest 20%, Second 20%, Third 20%, Fourth 20%, Highest 20% 

Total Household Expenditures: Divide the selected quintile expenditure value by the cpi ratio for each year. 

Spending Share of Total Income: Divide the selected quintile expenditure value by the quintile Income value for each year, shown as a percentage. 

Household Income: Divide the quintile income value by the cpi ratio for the years selected.  

CPI ratio: Divide current year ‘CPI’ value by latest year ‘CPI’ value.  

DATA SOURCES

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) from 1984 to current data. 

CPI data from 1984 to the current year. 

DASHBOARD AUTHORS

Annapurni Subramaniam, Jayson Lusk