Need a conversation starter? Here’s an easy one: The price of eggs. People simply cannot stop talking about how much the cost has gone up over the past year.
And they are correct: The national average price for a dozen eggs was $1.79 in December 2021. Today they are way more than twice as expensive, in the $4.50-$4.75 range.
The main reason is a nasty strain of avian flu that killed an estimated 29% of the egg-laying hen flocks in the United States. That loss of production wouldn’t seem to explain why the price of eggs has doubled, but The Washington Post, citing an agricultural economist, observed, “that’s exactly what you would expect with a product for which demand is relatively insensitive to price changes.”
Or, as columnist Megan McArdle noted, Americans are accustomed to eggs, and will keep buying them even at higher prices because there’s really no food substitute for them.
The good news is that farmers are rebuilding their hen flocks and egg prices are starting to come down. And McArdle makes a fair point when she says that even at today’s high costs, “eggs are still really cheap, historically speaking.”
Her Feb. 7 column on the Post website contained a bundle of fascinating information about how food prices and American dining habits have changed since the early 1900s.
Old cookbooks, those from 1950 and before, seem to consider both eggs and chicken as luxury foods. In 1896, McArdle reported, a pound of round steak was 35 percent cheaper than a pound of eggs. Today round steak is far more expensive.
In the 127 years since then, Americans’ large income increases, coupled with agricultural improvements, have greatly reduced the price of chicken and eggs.
In 1901, according to an economist, the average family spent 42% of its money on food. In 2021 that average was just 10%.
“Advances in food processing, coupled with a century of economic growth, have liberated almost 35 hours a week (for preparing meals), and a full 30 percent of our incomes, to spend on something else,” McArdle wrote.
Chicken and egg prices were among the foods whose relative prices declined greatly, largely due to innovations like raising chickens indoors to reduce the threats of disease and predators. Breeding programs helped today’s average hen lay nearly 300 eggs per year, compared to about 150 annually in the 1930s.
In 1905, McArdle wrote, the average male factory worker earned enough to buy 41 cartons of eggs a week. Today’s average worker could buy 275 cartons per week, even at the higher prices.
“It might help to remember that however poor you feel, your ancestors would have taken one look at your grocery cart and declared you rich beyond their dreams,” McArdle observed.
It’s a good look at how American innovation through the decades has paid off so handsomely. But the price of eggs is still ridiculous. Ask anybody. Those rebuilding hen flocks cannot increase their production quickly enough.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
