Shocks to world commodity prices and the depreciation of sterling led to a large increase in the price of food in the UK. It also resulted in large changes in the relative prices of different foods. We document these changes, and consider how they affected the composition of households’ shopping baskets. We isolate the impact of changes in relative food prices from variation in preferences using data on purchasing decisions made by a representative panel of British households. We show that changes in relative food prices led to a worsening in the nutritional quality of households’ shopping baskets, though this was partially mitigated by offsetting changes in preferences.
Authors
Rachel Griffith
Rachel is Research Director and Professor at the University of Manchester. She was made a Dame for services to economic policy and education in 2021.
Martin O'Connell
Martin, previously Deputy Research Director, is a Research Fellow at IFS and Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin.
Kate Smith
Kate is an IFS Research Fellow and an Assistant Professor at LSE, interested in public finance, industrial organisation and applied microeconomics.
More from IFS
Understand this issue
Policy analysis
Academic research
