People in richer countries spend more on food, but it’s a smaller share of their overall spending

Three billion people worldwide cannot afford a healthy diet that gives them all the nutrients they need.

Most of these people live in low- to middle-income countries, where people have less money to spend on food. You might rightly guess that people in richer countries tend to spend more on food — but they also spend a smaller share of overall spending on food. You can see this in the chart, where each dot represents one country in 2022.

The average budget in Switzerland for food consumed at home was more than four times that of Kenya (when measured in US dollars). But food made up less than 10% of Swiss consumer spending, compared to almost 60% in Kenya.

This means people in richer countries don’t only have more money to spend on food; they also have far more left to spend on other important resources, like housing, education, clothing, and health.

Read more in my article “Engel's Law: Richer people spend more money on food, but it makes up a smaller share of their income” →

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “People in richer countries spend more on food, but it’s a smaller share of their overall spending” by Hannah Ritchie, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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