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While potatoes are among the cheapest food items today, potato prices have increased over 39-fold from 1913 to 2013, rising from less than 2 cents to over 62 cents per pound—the sharpest rate of increase seen among items in a list of consumer foods for which the Consumer Price Index has price data going back to 1913.
Item | January 1913 | January 2013 |
---|---|---|
Bacon | 0.254 | 4.407 |
Bread | 0.056 | 1.422 |
Butter(1) | 0.409 | 3.501 |
Cheese | 0.222 | 5.832 |
Chuck roast | 0.149 | 3.696 |
Coffee | 0.299 | 5.902 |
Eggs, per dozen | 0.373 | 1.933 |
Flour | 0.033 | 0.524 |
Fresh milk, per gallon(2) | 0.356 | 3.526 |
Ham | 0.251 | 2.693 |
Pork chops | 0.187 | 3.465 |
Potatoes | 0.016 | 0.627 |
Rice | 0.086 | 0.715 |
Round steak | 0.205 | 5.074 |
Sirloin steak | 0.238 | 5.705 |
Sugar | 0.058 | 0.683 |
Footnotes: | ||
Note: All average prices are per pound, unless otherwise noted. |
Egg prices have increased the least in the last century, up about 5-fold (from 37 cents to $1.93 per dozen) as advances in production, delivery, and storage techniques have outpaced those seen for most other food items.
These price data are from the Consumer Price Indexes program and are featured in "Average Food Prices: a snapshot of how much has changed over a century," Beyond the Numbers, February 2013). Average price of butter shown on the chart is for January 2012. The price of butter for January 2013 is not available.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, Consumer Prices, 1913 and 2013 at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2013/ted_20130228.htm (visited October 11, 2024).