How much people in different countries spend on food
THE discovery by European food shoppers that some of them have been eating horse
in place of beef is, some argue, a result of a trend in the rich world. Spending
on food as a share of total income has declined markedly, but at the
expense, some say, of quality. This is a nice kind of problem to have: people in
poor countries are forced to devote a far higher share of income to buying food.
As the chart shows, that correlation between poverty and spending on food is not
watertight: Indians, for example, spend less of their household budget on
food than Russians do. In general, though, as countries develop people spend
proportionally less on food. South Koreans spent one-third of their income on
food in 1975; now the figure is just 12%. That leaves more money for the more
enjoyable things in life. Hungarians lead the way in these
matters: they devote around 10% of their household spending to alcohol and
tobacco.
