Americans are increasingly struggling to pay for groceries, with many households resorting to credit cards or savings to buy food, a new report found.
The report by the Urban Institute found that about 63 percent of working-age adults have used a credit card to buy food. Of those, 19.6 percent did not pay the full balance but did make minimum payments. Another 8.7 percent were not even able to make minimum payments.
"This means that over 1 in 4 working-age adults used credit cards to purchase food for their families and experienced repayment challenges," the report noted.
The report also found that it was increasingly common for adults to float grocery debt, with about 10 percent of adults using a buy now pay later option. About 20 percent of adults said they were dipping into savings to pay for groceries. About 1 in 20 said they had resorted to a payday loan to buy food.
"Families with low incomes and those who reported that their grocery costs had increased a lot in the past year were the most likely to take on debt to pay for groceries, which could leave them less able to meet their basic needs in the future," reads a passage of the report.
Elsewhere, more than half of adults, 51.3 percent, said that their grocery bill had risen significantly over the last 12 months.
The U.S. experienced a burst of higher inflation following the end of COVID-19 lockdowns. The inflation rate reached a high of 9.1 percent in June 2022. From December 2021 to November 2022, the monthly rate of inflation was at least 7 percent.
By the end of President Joe Biden's term, inflation was once again below 3 percent. It began rising again in recent months following the start of the U.S.-Iran war, which disrupted supply chains and led to a spike in oil prices.
In March, April, and May, the inflation rate was 3.3 percent, 3.8 percent, and 4.2 percent. The May rate of 4.2 percent was the highest inflation had been since May 2023.
Once prices rise, they don't go back down. Every new spike in inflation builds on the previous increase. One way to offset inflation is through worker earnings rising at a comparable rate.
Overall, U.S. wages have kept pace with inflation over the long-term, but buying power has dropped in the last five years. The Pew Research Center noted that from 1999 through 2025, wages rose by anywhere from 11% to 22%, depending on which price index was used.
However, in the last five years, real wages for Americans fell versus inflation by a range of 1 percent to 3.5 percent depending on the price index used.
