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Notes -
For consumer units of one person in 2013–2014:
income before taxes (%)
food (%)
These statistics look at consumer units, which are basically the same as households. The definition of "consumer unit" doesn't have an explicit minimum age, which is why I didn't put one here—but you probably can assume that a consumer unit is unlikely to be led by a person younger than 18.
Thanks, the shift from 2013-2014 to 2023-2024 does indicate that young adults are being more disciplined in terms of eating out compared to to 10 years ago. To be fair, the whole "Avocado toast" argument is like 10 years old as well, so the same sort of phenomenon could have been happening 10 years ago. But it certainly seems that gen Zs do have grounds to complain to millennials that their relative financial struggles aren't due to relative food irresponsibility.
And if we presume 0-24 is mostly reflective of 18-24, that's actually a really striking outlier. Perhaps the youngest adults have trouble adapting to being responsible for their own food and make large mistakes in their first 6 years which they learn from fairly quickly.
Speaking as a millennial who was out and about in the mid 2010s I ate out more then because I had a lot more free cash. I was kind of a loser and kind of broke but my base expenses were low.
Gen Zs today have a right to complain because in my experience a lot of base cost of living stuff is more expensive. I make more money than I did back then but I shop for groceries at Walmart now and mostly only eat out if the boss is paying for it because I'm somehow still broke.
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Between 18-20 a large portion of my meals came from a dining plan that was a mandatory part of my mandatory dorm housing.
Between 20-23 I ate "out" but it wasn't expensive stuff. I'd pick up a slice of pizza for 2 dollars or a pastry from a coffee shop for around the same. Costco hot dogs were great.
I don't know how much college and graduate studies is impacting this.
Also, dating. When people go on dates it means they eat out usually, especially at first. After you're married and settled down maybe you make a nice dinner at home.
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It's been a while, but when I was single it was far more common for me to work an extra hour or two on a hard project then pick up dinner on the way home. Also, when cooking for 1 there tends to be more wasted food unless you're very vigilant about meal prepping or freezing ingredients. So eating out is relatively less costly than the alternative.
Eating out is egregiously more expensive than cooking at home.
Like-for-like it is but there's definitely ways of keeping eating out costs under median homecooking costs and it depends a ton on where you live and what you'd consider eating out.
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