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Groceries Cost More of Income in Red States [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-24
When you ask how much groceries dent your wallet, there are prices, and there is your wallet. Red states have lower prices, but also much lower incomes. That’s because Red state voters WANT to hurt the poor more than they want to help themselves. See Dying of Whiteness, by Jonathan Metzl, for specifics about health, and also about drug and gun deaths and outright suicide. We are talking about people who would rather die than vote for Medicaid expansion, for example, even if Medicaid could help them. Similarly for investments in education, union rights, and much more.
States Where People Spend the Most & Least on Groceries
Grocery prices have soared over the past few years, rising more than 25% since 2019, according to the USDA. Earnings have not risen at the same rate, though, which has resulted in groceries becoming less affordable and taking up a much larger percentage of people’s incomes. In light of this issue, WalletHub analyzed the prices of 26 common grocery items in each of the 50 states. We then added these costs together and compared them to the median household income in order to determine where people are spending the greatest percentage of their income on groceries.
These are costs for a specific market basket, not total costs per person.
Overall Rank State Cost of Groceries as a Share of Median
Monthly Household Income 1 Mississippi 2.64% 2 West Virginia 2.57% 3 Arkansas 2.49% 4 Kentucky 2.41% 5 Louisiana 2.39%
And at the other end of the scale:
Overall Rank State Cost of Groceries as a Share of Median
Monthly Household Income 46 Connecticut 1.62% 47 New Hampshire 1.60% 48 Massachusetts 1.54% 49 Maryland 1.54% 50 New Jersey 1.50%
My congratulations to New Jersey, where I grew up. Now I live in Illinois, ranked 36 with cost/income at 1.84.
How are you doing?
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