Women and men shop differently and have different perceptions of prices and inflation, according to the recently-released European Central Bank’s new Consumer Expectations Survey (CES).
The survey examines how inflation expectations are formed and revised across gender, and why that matters for central banks all across Europe-including Cyprus.
Women tend to have higher inflation expectations than men and certain factors can explain some of the gender inflation gap, the survey noted.
And this gap is quite substantial: the inflation expectations of women and men participating in the CES differed by almost one percentage point.
So, what factors did we find which could explain this gender gap? First, on average, women place more emphasis on perceived food inflation. Second, men are more confident about their inflation expectations.
However, when women and men receive new information regarding price changes, while that may differ depending on personal experiences, they will both adjust their inflation expectations at a similar rate and in a similar pattern to each other.