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In the 1950s, food was one-third of budget

Submitted by Philip Brewer on September 11, 2007 - 04:54.

It may seem like food is expensive now, but in the 1950s it was a full one-third of a poor person's budget. In fact, that's how the poverty line was established: Government studies had already figured out what a healthy diet was. They calculated how much it would cost to eat a healthy diet (if you prepared everything at home) and then they tripled it. Three times the lowest cost to eat a healthy diet was the poverty line.

If food costs come to less than a third of your total spending, you're already ahead of the game versus a poor person in the 1950s. (The governent's current estimate is that food comes to 10.2% of an average person's budget.)

If you're interested, all you might ever want to know about the history of the poverty line is in The Development of the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds and Their Subsequent History as the Official U.S. Poverty Measure.

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