US Food Price Inflation Continues To Outpace Overall Inflation

6/8/2017

From 2012 to 2016, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all food (grocery store and restaurant food) rose by 6.1 percent—a larger increase than the 4.5-percent rise in the all-items CPI. When the CPI for a specific category, such as food, rises faster than the all-items CPI, it indicates that prices for the category are rising faster than prices for consumer goods and services as a whole.

Livestock and crop diseases, major weather events, and shocks to global food markets have caused price inflation for food to outpace many other consumer spending categories. Only prices for medical care and housing rose faster than food prices during 2012-16.

Food prices experienced larger increases than prices for recreation and education and communication, and apparel and transportation prices fell over 2012 to 2016. The 10.3-percent decline in transportation prices—a result of falling gasoline prices in 2015 and 2016—helped hold down economy-wide inflation. Food-price inflation outpacing economy-wide inflation is not a recent phenomenon. Over the last decade, food-price inflation averaged 2.4 percent per year and overall inflation averaged 1.8 percent per year.