Rising prices force students to make tough choices

By Olivia Grant | UConn Jour­nal­ism
Jan­u­ary 20, 2025

M’Lynn Gon­za­lez walks up and down the aisles of her local gro­cery store, pick­ing up ingre­di­ents for din­ner tonight. She finds what she needs, heads to the reg­is­ter and rings her­self up. She sighs and takes her card out to pay as she reads her total — $40.  

Gon­za­lez, a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, says $40 is the aver­age price she pays at the gro­cery store for just one dinner’s worth of ingre­di­ents. The cost of food and oth­er essen­tial items has risen beyond the bud­gets of many. Ser­vices such as food pantries con­tin­ue to grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty as the U.S. pop­u­la­tion deals with the increased costs of essen­tial goods.   

The U.S. may be beyond the spike in infla­tion seen in 2022, but prices aren’t going back down. Accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture, gro­cery prices have risen 25% since 2020.   

Accord­ing to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics, this infla­tion can be attrib­uted to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that began in March 2020. Sup­ply chains were sud­den­ly halt­ed, and unem­ploy­ment rose sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing this time.   

But dis­rupt­ed sup­ply chains weren’t the only thing that caused prices to rise. Accord­ing to Dr. Fred Carstensen, an eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor at UConn and the direc­tor of the Con­necti­cut Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic Analy­sis, the actions of large cor­po­ra­tions are also to blame.   

“Com­pa­nies used the sup­ply chain dis­rup­tion of COVID to increase prices with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion because they could do it under the cov­er of the chaos that was the result of the post-COVID dynam­ic,” said Carstensen.   

In many ways, the U.S. is still recov­er­ing from the eco­nom­ic after-effects of the pan­dem­ic.  

Gov­ern­ment assis­tance for low-income fam­i­lies, orig­i­nal­ly offered dur­ing the COVID lock­downs, is decreas­ing at a time when it is still des­per­ate­ly need­ed for many. Accord­ing to Feed­ing Amer­i­ca, as the gov­ern­ment ends ser­vices such as emer­gency allot­ments for Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­grams, the demand for non-gov­ern­men­tal ser­vices such as food pantries only grows.   

Addi­tion­al­ly, accord­ing to the Unit­ed for ALICE web­site, the Con­sumer Price Index may not be com­plete­ly accu­rate in show­ing the impact of infla­tion on low-income Amer­i­cans. While the CPI gives a good overview, infla­tion has impact­ed goods at dif­fer­ent rates.   

Unit­ed for ALICE is a research non­prof­it start­ed by the Unit­ed Way, that stud­ies infla­tion, specif­i­cal­ly its effects on the low-income pop­u­la­tion in the U.S.  The acronym ALICE rep­re­sents peo­ple who are asset lim­it­ed, income con­strained, and employed 

The ALICE index mea­sures price changes over time only for essen­tials in these house­holds such as hous­ing, food, trans­porta­tion and child­care. Prices have risen even more dra­mat­i­cal­ly for the essen­tials that were stud­ied, on aver­age over­all prices of the essen­tials stud­ied rose 1.5% more than the CPI indi­cat­ed.   

Addi­tion­al­ly, the cost of liv­ing in Con­necti­cut in par­tic­u­lar is con­sid­er­ably high­er than the aver­age of the rest of the coun­try, accord­ing to the Mis­souri Eco­nom­ic Research and Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter.   

For exam­ple, accord­ing to the U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion, Con­necti­cut has the third high­est elec­tric­i­ty prices in the coun­try, com­ing in just below Hawaii and Cal­i­for­nia.   

Fac­tors such as these impact the afford­abil­i­ty of every­day life for all Con­necti­cut res­i­dents, espe­cial­ly stu­dents.

Gon­za­lez reports that as a com­muter, her biggest expens­es are food and gas.   

“I can afford gas right now, but in the long-term school is expen­sive,” she said. 

Stu­dents at UConn deal with the high­er cost of liv­ing in Con­necti­cut in mul­ti­ple ways. One of those is by using Husky Har­vest, a food bank that was estab­lished after the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in ear­ly 2023.   

“Being Din­ing Ser­vices, it’s part of our heart and who we are is to feed peo­ple. … Husky Har­vest is basi­cal­ly try­ing to touch on any food inse­cu­ri­ties we have on cam­pus,” said Hei­di Slater, the cen­tral pro­duc­tion kitchen area man­ag­er for UConn and one of the founders of Husky Har­vest.   

Accord­ing to Slater, the food bank has proven to be quite pop­u­lar over the two years it has been oper­at­ing. The pantry aver­ages around 80–125 atten­dees per day, and that doesn’t account for the fact that often those peo­ple are feed­ing mul­ti­ple oth­ers.  

Husky Har­vest gives away around two pal­lets of food a week, but they have giv­en out almost 12 pal­lets, or 12,000 pounds, worth of food in a day dur­ing one of their pop-up events, accord­ing to Slater.   

While Husky Har­vest and oth­er ser­vices like it may be extreme­ly ben­e­fi­cial to the com­mu­ni­ty, they are unable to pro­vide all of the neces­si­ties for a stu­dent to sur­vive while in school. Accord­ing to the Urban Insti­tute, 58% of full-time col­lege stu­dents sur­veyed in the U.S. are employed while being in school.   

Accord­ing to the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics, 45% of min­i­mum wage work­ers are peo­ple under 25, this age group makes up the great­est por­tion of min­i­mum wage work­ers in the U.S.   

The fed­er­al­ly man­dat­ed min­i­mum wage, which is $7.25 per hour, has not increased since 2009, accord­ing to the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor, while the cost of gro­ceries has risen 25% since 2020 alone. Work­ers in the U.S. are fac­ing a pay cut of sorts, as their wages aren’t ris­ing to keep up with the cost of goods.   

Accord­ing to Daniel Fitz­mau­rice, the Direc­tor of Advo­ca­cy for ALICE, this “pay cut” dri­ves low-income house­holds into tough finan­cial posi­tions. “What we hear from fam­i­lies all the time is, ‘If I need some­thing else, I have to work more hours,’” said Fitz­mau­rice.   

Although min­i­mum wage does vary by state, the fed­er­al min­i­mum wage would be $22.88 today if it had grown along with work­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, accord­ing to Sta­tista. Connecticut’s cur­rent min­i­mum wage is $15.69. There is no state in the U.S. where the min­i­mum wage is above $18, and most fall far below that num­ber, accord­ing to the Depart­ment of Labor.   

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Low Income Hous­ing Com­mis­sion, there is no state in which an adult can afford a two-bed­room apart­ment work­ing 40 hours a week on min­i­mum wage.   

“I don’t think even if I did work more hours like I used to work, … I would be able to pay for every­thing I would need to,” said Gon­za­lez.   

Accord­ing to a recent Gallup poll, infla­tion and high cost of liv­ing is the biggest finan­cial wor­ry on the minds of Amer­i­cans. 41% of peo­ple sur­veyed report­ed this con­cern in 2024, and the num­ber of peo­ple who report­ed wor­ry­ing about infla­tion has been ris­ing steadi­ly since 2020.