Published: December 19, 2007 02:12 am      

Food staples showing increase

Prices for 60 specific items in Monongalia, Preston counties checked once every three months

FAIRMONT — As a professional economist who does a consumer market basket survey once a quarter, Amy Higginbotham said the soaring price of eggs came home to her when she was out shopping recently.

“I realized I was paying the same price for a half-dozen pack for the price of what a dozen large eggs was going for in the first quarter of 2006,” she said.

“I had to stop and check the price again,” Higginbotham said.

She’s not your ordinary shopper.

She knows the price of eggs in supermarkets in Monongalia and Preston counties has increased 119 percent from January 2006 through the end of September this year.

She can tell you that in the first quarter of 2006, a dozen eggs cost 79 cents. In the third quarter of this year (July-September), the price in the two counties — they make up the Morgantown Metropolitan Statistical Area — was $1.73.

She also knows the price of ground beef (90 percent lean) has risen 12 percent in the same 21-month period. It’s gone from $2.33 per pound to $2.61.

A half-gallon of whole milk that cost $1.99 in January 2006 was going for $2.16 cents in the third quarter. That’s a hike of 8 1/2 percent.

And an 18 ounce box of Kellog’s corn flakes went from $2.86 to $3.31, an increase of 15.7 percent.

Higginbotham knows because she leads a team that checks prices for 60 specific items once every three months.

The survey includes the costs of housing, utilities, transportation, health care, and other miscellaneous goods and services.

The field survey is for a national cost-of-living index, applicable for persons whose incomes are in the top 20 percent. The Council for Community and Economic Research, based on the Arlington, Va., campus of George Mason University, does the quarterly survey in 330 cities. The survey is called the ACCRA survey and is available online at this address: www.accra.org.

Higginbotham wrote a report on the survey for the December issue of The Morgantown MSA Economic Monitor.

The Monitor is published by the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER). Higginbotham is a research associate with the bureau. The Monitor is sponsored by Clear Mountain Bank. It is available online at these addresses: www.bber.wvu.edu and www.clearmountainbank.com.

For the third-quarter survey, Higginbotham’s team went to nine grocery stores and 10 gasoline stations. They talked to six doctor’s offices to find the costs of various procedures, she said.

They also asked seven Realtors for the price of a 2,400-square-foot home with a garage, three to four bedrooms, two baths and a fireplace.

The cost of such a home in the two counties has gone from $305,200 to $337,760, an increase of 10.7 percent.

Higginbotham spotlighted the food staples in her report because “out of all the 60 items in the survey, they are the ones that showed a consistent increase over the 21-month period.”

The price of gasoline over the period has fluctuated so much that finding some consistent trend wasn’t possible, she said.

In her report, Higginbotham said the food costs “could be linked to increased demand for ethanol and higher fuel costs.”

But there is no data — yet — for that proposition, she said on Tuesday.

While the staples have “dramatically increased,” as well as those of some other items, the total cost of living in the two-county area is average for an urban area, she said.

The Morgantown MSA index in the third quarter was 100.5. That’s only five-tenths of a percent above the average of the 300-plus urban areas in the national survey.

“The overall cost of living for the area in relation to the rest of the U.S. is average,” Higginbotham concludes in her report.

E-mail Bill Byrd at bbyrd@timeswv.com.