"Income distribution becoming more uneven"

While affluent owners spend a growing amount of money on premium dog and cat food and treats, those struggling to make ends meet are trading down to cheaper products or abandoning processed pet food altogether.
In real terms, pet care value sales in the US have been flat over recent years, declining by 3 per cent between 2009 and 2012, before expanding by 3 per cent to $30 bn during the period 2012-2014. Given the onset of the so-called "great recession" in late 2008 (real GDP contracted by 3 per cent during 2009, while the country's unemployment rate peaked at 10 per cent in 2010), the pet care market actually performed relatively well.
This was largely due to the performance of a small number of categories - premium dog and cat food and dog and cat treats. Between 2009 and 2014, real value sales of premium dog food exhibited a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1 per cent to $10 bn, while real value sales of economy and mid-priced products both had CAGRs of -2 per cent, declining to $3 bn and $5 bn respectively. As a result, premium dog and cat food now accounts for a third of all pet care value sales in the US. Meanwhile, real value sales of dog treats increased by 23 per cent to $3 bn between 2009 and 2014, while cat treat sales expanded  by 44 per cent to $594 mio.

This bifurcation of the pet food marketplace is being driven by two trends. The first is economic - the recovery has been uneven, with affluent households benefiting disproportionately. As a result, the proportion of American households defined as middle class declined slightly between 2009 and 2014 to 21 per cent, while the country's Gini Index (a measure of income inequality where 100 equals "perfect inequality" and zero "perfect equality") rose from 47 to 48 over the same period. As a result, income distribution in the US is now more uneven than in China.
In this context, it is not surprising that some less affluent American consumers are spending less on pet food. For example, in February 2014, a local TV station reported that Warrensburg Senior Centre in Warrensburg/Missouri had begun to include pet food in its meals-on-wheels deliveries after staff noticed that many senior citizens were sharing their home-delivered meals with their pets because they could not always afford pet food. "What was I supposed to do - just eat in front of him?" one said. The report added that this idea was spreading nationwide as awareness of the prevalence of this behaviour increases.