Household Spending Guide
What Americans Spend on Food: A Full Breakdown
Food is the third-largest household expense. How much goes to groceries vs. restaurants? How does income change food choices? Here's the full picture from 2024 BLS data.
Food Spending Breakdown (2024)
Food spending by subcategory (2024)
Annual dollars per household
| Food Category | Annual | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Food at home | $6,224 | $519 |
| Food away from home | $3,945 | $329 |
Food Spending by Income Level (2024)
| Income Group | Annual Food |
|---|---|
| Lowest 20% | $5,498 |
| Second 20% | $7,400 |
| Middle 20% | $9,097 |
| Fourth 20% | $11,845 |
| Highest 20% | $16,989 |
Key Findings
- Food away from home (dining out) has grown steadily. Post-pandemic, restaurant and delivery spending has increased for all income groups, especially higher-income households.
- Food consumes a higher share of lower-income budgets. Even though lower-income households spend less in dollars, food represents a larger portion of their total expenditures.
- Regional differences are notable. The Northeast has higher food costs than the South, reflecting both grocery prices and restaurant costs.
Explore more: Full Food Category Data · By Income Level · By Region
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024.
Compiled by the " research team.
Food-at-home vs. food-away-from-home: the long-run shift
One of the most-cited findings in BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey commentary is the gradual reallocation of household food dollars from groceries (food at home, "FAH") to restaurants, takeout, and delivery (food away from home, "FAFH"). The pandemic temporarily inverted this trend in 2020-2021, but subsequent years restored the long-run trajectory and pushed FAFH share to historical highs in the upper quartile of income.
| Income quintile | Total food $ (annual, 2024) |
|---|---|
| Lowest 20% | $5,498 |
| Second 20% | $7,400 |
| Middle 20% | $9,097 |
| Fourth 20% | $11,845 |
| Highest 20% | $16,989 |
Source: BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey 2024, total food spending by income quintile.
Why food-share matters for budget vulnerability
The food share of total spending is one of the oldest indicators of household economic stress used by economists (originally formalized by Engel's Law in the 19th century). When food consumes more than 15% of total household expenditure, relatively small price shocks, a 10% grocery inflation print, a job loss, an unexpected medical bill, can cascade rapidly into delinquencies elsewhere in the budget. Lower-quintile households in the table above sit close to or above that 15% threshold, which is why food inflation reads in the Consumer Price Index tend to dominate cost-of-living narratives even when overall inflation is moderate.
Limitations and Caveats
Several constraints warrant emphasis when drawing inferences from these figures. Sampling error, nonresponse bias, and imputation procedures each introduce quantifiable uncertainty that propagates through derived statistics. Confidence intervals, where published by the collecting agency, should be consulted before attributing significance to small differences between observations.
The taxonomy used to classify entities, expenditures, or incidents evolves periodically. A category redefinition between consecutive releases can produce apparent discontinuities that reflect classification changes rather than genuine behavioral shifts. longitudinal analyses must verify category stability across the studied interval.
Suppression rules applied to protect confidentiality may eliminate observations from sparsely populated strata. This differential suppression disproportionately affects rural counties, small institutions, and minority subgroups, systematically biasing the observable distribution toward larger, more urbanized populations. Researchers should note that absence of a data point may signify suppression rather than a true zero.
Where to go next
See how your own household compares to these BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey figures.
- Find your spending percentile against the national income quintiles. Budget calculator
- Explore the full breakdown by category, income, age, and region. All categories
- Save the categories you want to track to your private watchlist. Save categories
All figures are national-average BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey data; individual households vary.
