Lower and higher income Americans' plans for grocery spending

Americans' grocery bills have become a hot-button issue in the 2024 presidential election. How are lower-income and higher-income consumers expecting to spend on food over the next year?

Yahoo Finance anchor Julie Hyman breaks down data from Bank of America, comparing the two income classes' spending patterns as inflation persists in food prices.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend.

This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

In today's chart of the day, we're looking at grocery shopping and what people are expecting to spend at the market.

Let's get to your finances.

Julie Hyman, Now with a closer look.

I mean, this was very much on my mind this week for a number of different reasons.

One.

It's a political issue, right?

What people are spending at the grocery store is something that came up in the debate.

Two.

We looked at food at home prices.

Remember as one of our charts of the day this week, following CP I that we have seen since before the pandemic.

Overall, CP I up 21 percent.

Food at home prices up 26 percent.

So it's very much something consumers are thinking about.

Bank of America does a regular survey of consumers and tries to get a sense of what they're planning to spend on and how much they're planning to spend on.

They did.

This survey of 1000 people from September 9th to the 11th, and one of the things they look at is how much people plan to plan to spend on groceries.

This is looking at what they plan to spend 12 months out from now.

And there is this divide between higher and lower income consumers.

You've seen that it's kind of muddled along the lower income consumers are the purple ones here, and they plan to spend less on groceries a year from now.

Whereas upper income consumers plan to spend more.

There have been times when both of them plan to spend less, and there are a number of reasons behind this one.

It could be that people are still cutting back, too.

Maybe they're hoping that prices are start to alleviate.

Although prices are probably not gonna go down necessarily, they might just rise at a lower rate.

One other thing I just quickly wanted to mention is we also got numbers from Kroger this week.

A big grocery store chain.

Of course, those shares went higher over the course of the week here.

After reported numbers, people buying more private label a K a cheaper stuff.

Um, and their margins have been improving