Since 1980, the price of chicken per pound has followed inflation pretty steadily. Eggs? Not so much.
This chart shows monthly U.S. price indexes for chicken (lb) and eggs (dozen), normalized to 1980 and shown on a log scale. Recent price spikes in eggs are driven by avian flu outbreaks, supply chain shocks, and wild demand swings.

Note: This is a reupload with edited title for clarity. Thank you to u/know_nothing_novice for pointing out my mistake in the original title.

Link to the interactive plot is here

Posted by TreeFruitSpecialist

12 comments

  1. Tool: Created in Datawrapper.

    Source: FRED St. Louis Fed. Chicken: APU0000706111; Eggs: APU0000708111

    Normalized chicken and egg price indices were calculated with the following equation: Index Value = (Current Price ÷ Price in 1980) × 100

  2. Maybe this is naive of me, but I’d have expected that Chicken & Egg prices would be a lot more closely related- why aren’t they?

    From the description I see Avian flu, supply chain, and demand- but I’d imagine that Avian Flu and Supply Chain issues affect both of them similarly. Plus there’s still massive variation even prior to 2020.

    (Btw in case tone is conveyed wrong- this isn’t a criticism of the post, I’m just genuinely curious why there’s so much variation between them)

  3. I takes more time to raise laying hens than it does for poultry (something like 3 years vs 9 months). So an event like bird flu has a much bigger impact on the relevant bird population.

  4. Amazing how the issue of inflation and high prices disappeared despite continued upwards trends.

  5. Egg prices are more volatile than chicken meat because laying hens are highly vulnerable to avian flu, and when they’re culled, it takes months to replace them. Meat chickens grow fast and can be restocked quickly, which helps stabilize prices. Eggs also have inelastic demand and can’t be stored long, so even small supply shocks cause big price spikes.

  6. Both those series should have inflation taken out of the equation..

  7. Reading the description, it seems the thesis is that prices track long-term inflation – but inflation isn’t plotted here?

  8. Meh, don’t eat anything with eggs or chicken. Problem solved. It’s one I solved 35 years ago and wasn’t difficult.

  11. Sure, you can raise your own chickens and lower your eggs and poultry costs, but that’s a slippery slope. Because then you’ll have to deal with the never-ending racoon swarms and other predators like coyotes.

  12. Would be interesting in comparison with the general inflation curve.

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