US pet industry reset: Pet population update

Learn about the current pet populations in the U.S., including how they compare to 2019 numbers and the reasons behind the data.

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Pet food purchasing patterns have significantly changed as COVID-19 continues to bring in trends ahead of schedule. | (frender | iStock.com)
Pet food purchasing patterns have significantly changed as COVID-19 continues to bring in trends ahead of schedule. | (frender | iStock.com)

Editor’s note: This article is the third of a three-part series on the pet industry reset in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first article focused on physical vs. digital channel shopping trends. The second article covered pet care spending trends.

The previous column in this series, published in the May 2021 issue of Petfood Industry magazine, noted that, both because of and despite the COVID-19 pandemic, consumer spending on pet care increased in 2020 across all four pet industry product and service sectors. The “because of” side of the pet spending story ties in directly to pet acquisition patterns during this pandemic period. Pet population, acquisition and adoption patterns were especially complex in the wake of COVID-19, including a higher degree of fragmentation of pet acquisition across sources, and planned pet acquisitions being the plurality but not the majority.

Heavy acquisition of pets in 2020

Packaged Facts’ February 2021 survey data on types of pets acquired in the past 12 months show heavy acquisition of pets: 23% of current pet-owning households added dogs in the past 12 months, 19% of current pet-owning households added cats and 11% of current pet-owning households added pets other than dogs or cats.

The acquisition of pets other than dogs and cats in the wake of COVID-19 was disproportionately high relative to historical pet ownership hierarchies, reflecting the intertwined trends of owning multiple pets and owning multiple types of pets. For the 12-month period ending February 2021, 17% of those who had been pet owners in 2019 added more pets to their household. Given that pet ownership is a discretionary expense, and typically a very significant one, multiple-pet households are also relatively higher-income. Moreover, adding pets in the middle of a pandemic and of associated economic dislocations skewed to households that are financially secure. In the wake of COVID-19, therefore, increased affluence among the pet-owning customer base has added fuel to the pet product premiumization fires.

Increased pet populations in the U.S. in 2020

But the main story is the increased national population of pets. Drawing heavily on new MRI National Consumer Study data, Packaged Facts estimates that the overall percentage of U.S. households owning pets notched up from 54% in 2019 to 56.4% in 2020 (see Table 1), with 44% of households owning dogs, 25% owning cats and 12% owning other pets (including fish, birds, small mammals and reptiles/amphibians).

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TABLE 1: U.S. pet ownership rates went up across the board in 2020 after seeing dips in 2019. (Maria Starus I Fotolia.com)

By the total number of pets rather than by household ownership rates for pets, the surge of pet acquisition and adoption in the wake of COVID-19 brought the number of pet dogs in the U.S. to 96 million (up by over 10 million from 2019) and the number of pet cats to 32 million (up by over 2 million from 2019).

Moreover, two key trends are evident in the current population of dogs and cats:

1. The pendulum has swung toward medium-size dogs. Packaged Facts survey data for February 2020 vs. February 2021 show the share of dog owners with small (9–24 lbs.) dogs dipping from 41% to 36%, while the share with medium-sized (25–40 lbs.) dogs edged up from 35% to 38%. This trend is consistent with a degree of “suburbanization” of American lifestyles in the wake of COVID-19, including households in metropolitan areas whose lifestyles are now more home- rather than downtown-anchored.

2. Over half of dog or cat owners have senior pets. As of 2020, 55% of dog households and 53% of cat households had senior pets. The senior share of the pet dog population is up by 10 percentage points from 45% in 2014 to 55% in 2020. In addition to living longer, the pet population (like their human companions) continues to struggle with weight and other aging-related special needs, creating larger opportunities for functional pet foods. As with several key pet market dynamics, here too COVID-19 has accelerated existing trends: Banfield Pet Hospital (Wall Street Journal, March 4, 2021) shows 42% of pet owners in October 2020 reporting that their pets had gained weight during the pandemic quarantine.

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