Dining out: Are seniors today different from seniors a decade ago?

This is the first intertemporal analysis of seniors’ income elasticity of expenditure on food-away-from-home (FAFH) across age cohorts. While the expenditure behaviour of Australian seniors today is not too different from those a decade ago, today’s seniors are more homogenous in terms of the sensitivity of their FAFH spending to a change in income. The finding that seniors do not treat FAFH as a luxury good can serve as a buffer against potential declines in demand for food services in times of economic crisis and uncertainty, especially as seniors’ share of the overall population continues to grow in future years.