US pet food total market sales

Global democracy declined as American pet food sales rose, which is not quite a sentence anyone wants printed on a history book's back cover. And yet, here we are. The dogs are well. The voters are tired.

The Democracy Index dropped in 2020 as pandemic emergency powers suspended parliaments, postponed elections, and enabled crackdowns in dozens of countries, while pet food sales boomed on the pandemic pet adoption wave and housebound spending. Two trends moving for entirely different reasons that happened to inflect sharply in the same frightening year.

So the correlation is a grim coincidence: governments tightened and households grew. Neither is a victory. Both are what 2020 did.