The FRED graph above shows the prices of a dozen eggs and a pound of chicken breast. (A previous post graphed price changes for those items.)

Egg prices have been in the news for their stark increases recently. But chicken breast prices not so much, as those prices have been relatively stable. Why the difference in price patterns for products from the same animal?

Economic theory would tell you this: If two goods are substitutes, their prices track each other well, as one can be replaced by the other if one becomes relatively more expensive. But eggs and chicken meat are not substitutes in either production or consumption.

Are they complements? That would mean that, if you eat one, you necessarily eat the other. Only few recipes call for both eggs and chicken meat, so they aren’t complements in consumption. But they could be complements in production: An egg-laying hen can also provide chicken meat. In a case such as this, excess demand for one over the other can lead to a divergence of prices.

But that is not the explanation either. Nowadays, chickens are very specialized. “Broilers” grow in a few weeks before slaughter, while laying hens live for years. The latter have more opportunity to catch diseases, and the current avian flu epidemic is affecting them much more than broilers, which can be replaced quickly. Thus, chicken breast prices are much less affected, if at all, by current circumstances.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for “chicken breast” and click on the first choice. Click on “Edit Graph,” then open the “Add Line” tab, and search for/select the series for eggs. Finally, start the graph in 2006.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

Home mortgages are households’ largest source of debt. And since 2010, student loans have been their second-largest source of debt.

The FRED Blog has discussed student loan and household debt before, in relation to overall economic activity. Today, we compare student loan debt with three other categories of consumer credit:

• Revolving consumer credit, mostly credit card debt (blue area)
• Automobile loans (green area)
• Student loans (orange area)
• Other, non-revolving consumer credit (purple area)

The FRED graph above shows quarterly data on each category from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The units are in millions of dollars, but are presented in stacked areas to easily show each category as a percentage of the entire pool of consumer credit.

Data on student loans, as a standalone category of consumer credit, has been reported only since 2006, so we can’t observe the rollout of the Federal Direct Student Loan Program in 1994. But the growing share of student loans, as a fraction of overall consumer credit, is easy to see: It’s risen from 20.6% in 2006 to 35.6% in 2024. Learn even more here.

How this graph was created: Search the alphabetical list of FRED releases for “Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States” and select “Quarterly: L.222 Consumer Credit.” Select the four series listed under the heading “Memo” naming the types of consumer loans and click “Add to Graph.” Use the “Format” tab to change the graph type to “Area” and the stacking option to “Percent.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

FRED has data on an array of consumer expectations, confidence, and sentiment that can potentially yield information about future economic conditions.

FRED recently added the home purchase sentiment index (HPSI) to that collection of data. Reported by Fannie Mae, the HPSI is a composite index designed to track consumers’ housing-related attitudes based on six questions from the National Housing Survey:

• Is it a good time to buy or sell a house?
• Will home prices and mortgage interest rates rise, fall, or stay put?
• How concerned are you about losing your job?
• How does your current income compare with last year’s?

The index has a value of 60 in March 2011, its reference period. Its March 2025 value (latest available at the time of this writing) is 68.1, with a high of 93.8 in August 2019 and a low of 56.7 in October 2022.

The FRED graph above shows the HPSI (solid blue line) along with the University of Michigan’s overall consumer sentiment index (dashed green line). Between March 2011 and March 2025, these indexes have broadly moved hand in hand. That may not be surprising because overall consumer sentiment encompasses home purchase sentiment.

But, since 2020, changes to housing market conditions affecting the financial burden of households may have driven these sentiments apart. For example, some estrangement is visible from mid 2021 to mid 2022, with a wider gap between the two lines.

To learn even more about the HPSI, see this Economic Letter published by the San Francisco Fed.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey: Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI).” From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Add Line” tab to search for and select “University of Michigan: Consumer Sentiment.” Make sure to click “Add data series.” Change its units to be 100 on 2011-03-01 and apply the formula (a/100)*60 so that it has the same reference period and base value as the HPSI.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.