At A Glance

Noteworthy Characteristics

  • Provides food price data to support research on the economic determinants of food consumption, diet quality, and health outcomes.
  • Captures all consumer package goods purchase information, including both UPC, as well as non-UPC coded random weight products before 2007.
  • Provides estimates of quarterly market-level prices for more than 50 food groups.
  • Adequately represents geographic variation in prices faced by consumers, including low-income populations.

Website

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/quarterly-food-at-home-price-database.aspx

Purpose

To provide estimates of average market-level prices for more than 50 food groups in the United States (U.S.).

Target Population

U.S. households in the 48 contiguous states.

Conducted

Began in 1999. Constructed annually. Most recent year for which data were constructed was 2010. (See Special Notes section for more detail on data construction.)

QFAHPD-1: 1999 to 2006 (random-weighted foods, e.g., fresh fruits and vegetables, meats, cheeses) and Universal Price Code [UPC]-coded foods)

QFAHPD-2: 2004 to 2010 (UPC-coded foods only)

Price data for random-weighted foods are not available after 2006.

Sponsor

Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Special Note(s)

This dataset is constructed from data collected as part of the Nielsen Homescan® survey. USDA receives the data annually and then constructs prices for each quarter of the year.

Food categories are based on 2005 USDA Dietary Guidelines.

QFAHPD-1: Food prices are available for 52 food groups.
QFAHPD-2: Food prices available for 54 food groups.

For a listing of metropolitan and rural areas selected for QFAHPD-1 and QFAHPD-2, see Table 4 and Figure 1 in Methodology Behind the Quarterly Food-at-Home Price Database.

For more information, contact: Jessica E. Todd at jtodd@ers.usda.gov.

Sampling

Sample Design

QFAHPD is constructed from household food-at-home purchase data purchased from Nielsen Homescan ® data. Nielsen Homescan ® uses a stratified probability sample of households. Learn more about the sampling design.

Sample Size

QFAHPD-1: Food prices for 26 metropolitan areas from 1999 to 2006, four non-metropolitan areas from 1999 to 2001, and nine nonmetropolitan areas from 2002 to 2006. Price data were obtained from a sample of households that reported all of their food-at-home purchases. The sample was approximately 8,000 households in 1999-2003 and 40,000 in 2004-2006.

QFAHPD-2: UPC-coded food prices available for the 26 metropolitan and nine nonmetropolitan areas from 2004 to 2010. Price data were obtained from a sample of approximately 40,000 households that reported all of their food-at-home purchases.

Key Variables

Diet-Related

Name
Average quarterly prices (dollars per 100 grams of food) for several categories of fruits and vegetables; grains and dairy products; meats, beans, nuts, and eggs; and fats/oils, beverages, and prepared foods

Geocode/Linkage

Name
County
Census region
Census Division

Data Access and Cost

Data Availability

Obtain QFAHPD-1 data. Obtain QFAHPD-2 data.

Cost

Data are available free of charge.

Geocode/Linkage

Geocode Variable(s)

Census region, Census division, county

Existing Linkages

None found.

Special Note(s)

A crosswalk exists between marketgroup and county Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) code for all years. Prices are provided only at the marketgroup level, but users can identify which counties are includes in each marketgroup. This crosswalk is included in the codebooks. Marketgroups can be aggregated to Census Divisions (2002-2010) and Census Regions (1999-2010).

Selected Publications

Diet-Related

Gregory CA, Coleman-Jensen A. Do food prices affect food security: Evidence from the CPS 2002-2006. Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the 2011 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association and Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Joint Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 24- 26, 2011.

Ollinger M, Ralston K, Guthrie J. Location, School Characteristics, and the Cost of School Meals. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 2012;37(3):1–20.

Rahkovsky I, Gregory CA. Food prices and blood cholesterol. Economics and Human Biology. 2012. doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2012.01.004

Todd JE, Leibtag E, Penberthy C. Geographic Differences in the Relative Price of Healthy Foods Economic Information Bulletin No. 78, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2011.

Volpe R, Okrent A, Leibtag E. The effect of retailer concentration and store format on consumers’ food purchasing decisions. Selected Paper prepared for presentation at the 2011 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association and Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association Joint Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 24-26, 2011.

Wendt M,Todd JE. The Effect of Food and Beverage Prices on Children’s Weights. Economic Research Report No. 118, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2011.

Zhylyevskyy O, Jensen HH, Garasky SB,Cutrona CE, Gibbons FX. Effects of family, friends, and relative prices on fruit and vegetable consumption by African American youths. Working Paper 10-WP 515. Ames (IA): Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, 2010.