July 3, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Income and meals away from home
On average in 1997,
the lowest income group allocated fewer that 1 in 4 food dollars to meals
away from home, while the highest income group allocated more than 1 in 3
food dollars to meals away from home.
[Chart data—TXT]
For the five groups shown in the chart, the share of food expenditures
that went to meals away from home ranged from 24.1 percent for the lowest
income group to 34.3 percent for the highest.
The
higher the income group, the higher was the share spent on food away from
home. However, the share did not
steadily increase with income. There was virtually no difference in share
between the highest and next to highest income groups. In contrast there
were nearly 4 percentage points between the middle group and the group
just below it.
These data are a product of the BLS Consumer
Expenditure Survey program.
Additional information is available from "Let’s do lunch:
expenditures on meals away from home," by Geoffrey D. Paulin, Monthly
Labor Review, May 2000.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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