Food insecurity: Numbers show severity of grocery price hikes

One of the most enduring and visible parts of post-pandemic inflation has been increases in what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index calls “food at home”—in ordinary terms, groceries.

Groceries are a necessity, but numerous choices exist at many price points. The same cannot be said of housing or utilities.

Government data provides key insight about how grocery costs change over time. In addition to CPI data, the Department of Agriculture publishes four food costs each month to reflect quartiles of spending on various market baskets of groceries.

Rachel Blakeman, director of the Community Research Institute at Purdue Fort Wayne, wrote an opinion column on this topic in The Journal Gazette (subscription required).