Americans at the low end of the income rung are once again struggling to make ends meet.

A confluence of factors – the expiration of federal stimulus checks and surging inflation on staples like gas and food – are driving an even bigger wedge between the haves and have-nots.

While wealthier shoppers continue to splurge, low-income shoppers have pulled back faster than expected in the past two months. They’re focusing on necessities while turning to cheaper items or less expensive stores. And they’re buying only a little at a time.

It’s a reversal from a year or so ago when low-income shoppers, flush with money from the government and buoyed by wage increases, were able to spend more freely.

Kisha Galvan, a 44-year-old mother of eight children from ages 9 to 27, was able to stock up on groceries for the week and buy extras like clothing and shoes at Walmart for her children last year.

But without the pandemic-related government support and inflation hovering at a near 40-year high, she is buying more canned food and depending on the local food pantry several times a week instead of once a week.

“I shop meal to meal,” said the Rockford, Illinois, resident who has lived on disability for the past 15 years. “Before, we didn’t have to worry about what we were going to get. We just go get it.”

The deep divide in spending was reflected in the latest round of quarterly earnings for retailers. At the high end of the spectrum, Nordstrom and Ralph Lauren reported stronger-than-expected sales as their well-heeled shoppers returned to pre-pandemic routines. Lululemon also reported strong quarterly sales of its pricey athletic wear.

The pullback among low-income shoppers has not affected overall spending, which is still up. In April, the government said retail sales outpaced inflation for a fourth straight month, a reassuring sign that consumers – the primary drivers of America’s economy – are still providing vital support and helping ease concerns that a recession might be near.

But analysts believe even affluent shoppers could retrench if the stock market continues to weaken. Marshal Cohen, chief industry advisor at market research firm The NPD Group Inc., said the stock market affects higher-income shoppers “psychologically” and more losses on paper could make them cut back.

The spending mood has shifted from last October and November, when the Fed conducted a survey and found that almost eight in 10 adults were either “doing okay or living comfortably” when it came to their finances in 2021, the highest proportion to say so since the survey began in 2013. For those earning less than $25,000, the proportion that said they were doing at least okay jumped to 53 percent from 40 percent.

But inflation has taken a bigger bite out of personal budgets and wiped away some of the wage gains, especially for those who earn less. The national average cost of a gallon of gas, for example, has jumped to $4.76 from $4.20 a month ago and a painful 56 percent from a year earlier, according to AAA.

Across the economy, median wages jumped 6 percent in April from a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. But even though that was the largest increase since 1990, it was still below the inflation rate of 8.3 percent.

Meanwhile, the poorest one-fifth of Americans have exhausted the savings they’d built up during the pandemic in part through stimulus checks, child tax credit payments and higher wages, according to calculations by Jeffries, an investment bank. Americans’ bank accounts. The other four-fifths of U.S. households are still sitting on a large stockpile of additional savings since the pandemic, with much of that held by the top fifth.

Inflation is playing out differently within businesses that cater to shoppers with varying income levels.