As income rises the share spent on food falls, even as absolute food spending rises.
Engel's 1857 finding, and one of the most robust regularities in economics. The food share is still used as a poverty measure precisely because it falls so reliably with income.
In practice
- A household on £20,000 spends a third of it on food; on £80,000 it spends more in absolute terms and a tenth of the total.
- A country's rising food-delivery spending coexists with a falling share of income going on food overall.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Economics & Incentives
- Essay
- The regularities money obeys