IFS: inflation affecting older and poorer households more

13 March 2009

A new report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has suggested that different areas of society are being affected differently by inflation, adding that older and poorer households are the worst affected.

The report claims that official measures are `only ever supposed to be averages`, and that different households experience different rates of inflation depending on the types of goods and services they buy.

The claims are supported by a breakdown of individual categories of goods and services: for example, in the past year, private transport and housing have experienced 9.1% and 8.1% reductions in average prices respectively, while public transport and household fuel prices have rocketed by 10.2% and 35.1% respectively.

So, for example, someone who does not own their own car may be at a higher risk of debt than someone who has benefited from falling petrol costs in recent months.

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