The population’s sense of inflation is decreasing, but still very high

By: Trademagazin Date: 2023. 11. 06. 11:33

According to the official inflation data, consumer prices rose by 12.2% in September compared to the same period of the previous year.

Compared to this, according to a representative survey conducted by GKI among a thousand households, the population perceived a price increase of 32.8%. It is true that the latter data is not based on facts (e.g. price prescription, questionnaire, etc.), but on perception (in which one’s own experiences can be strongly distorted by information received through various formal and informal channels). Although perceived and official inflation move together in the trend, the measurements of the last few years show that the gap between perceived and official data widens simultaneously with the rise of the official consumer price index. In 2020, when the Maastricht convergence criterion for inflation was fulfilled, the monthly average was 12.3 percentage points higher than the official inflation as perceived by the population. In 2021, this difference rose to an average of 14.4, 17.1 in 2022, and 19.5 percentage points in the first nine months of 2023.