How soaring inflation forces stark choices on low-income Americans : NPR

A shopper walks through a grocery store in Washington, D.C, on March 13. Surging inflation poses a particular challenge for working-class families, impacting the cost of basic necessities such as groceries.

Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

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A shopper walks through a grocery store in Washington, D.C, on March 13. Surging inflation poses a particular challenge for working-class families, impacting the cost of basic necessities such as groceries.

Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

From rising rent to higher heating bills, surging inflation impacts everybody, but it poses a particular hardship for people with little extra money to spare.

On Tuesday, the Labor Department is expected to report that consumer prices in March were up more than 8% from a year ago, an even sharper jump than the 7.9% seen in the previous month. That would leave inflation at the highest level since 1982.

While no one likes paying more for haircuts or hamburgers, high inflation is especially painful for low-income families, whose spending is heavily weighted toward necessities such as groceries and gasoline, which have seen some of the largest price hikes.

These families have little fat in their household budgets to start with, so when inflation cuts into their limited spending power, something has to give.

Take Laura Kemp, a widow in Muldrow, Okla., who says that her heating bill last month was $306, more than double the $125 she paid a year ago.

“I live in a two-bedroom mobile home,” she says. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Every month it’s increasing and it’s taking up about a third of my income.”

Kemp feels like she’s losing ground, priced out of even small indulgences like a McDonald’s meal.

“By the 10th of the month, I have $200 left,” she says. “The $200 a month is now going into my gas tank.”

“I’m not making it to the end of the month anymore,” she adds. “Even getting a Big Mac now — a Big Mac meal is $8 — I can’t afford it.”

When the weather warms up, Kemp plans to plant a vegetable garden in hopes of defraying her food bill. She has picked out seeds for tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and eggplants, and she’s eyeing some of the land her brother owns — where her mobile home also sits.

Community volunteers cut and prepare fruit at the Houston Food Bank on Feb. 8.

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Community volunteers cut and prepare fruit at the Houston Food Bank on Feb. 8.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

From groceries to rent, prices are surging everywhere

Charlene Rye, who retired after 28 years in the poultry industry — much of that time in chicken-processing plants — finds herself having to make hard choices after chicken prices rose sharply over the last year, like everything else in the grocery store.

“You have to be a little more cautious in what you cook and things you make and things you buy,” she says.

Rye has been getting help from a food pantry in Sallisaw, Okla., which has gotten busier as prices have climbed.

“They open at 10 o’clock, and if you’re there at 9, there’s already people in line,” she says.

For Terrie Dean, it’s the cost of housing that really stings. She and her teenage son are living temporarily in a motel in Sallisaw. She relies on disability payments of about $1,600 a month, which for now puts an apartment out of reach.

“They want first month and deposit, not realizing that may be all this family brings in,” said Dean.

Low-income families typically spend about 45% of their income on housing, compared with 18% for upper-income families.

Gasoline prices hover around $4…