Exposure to inflation is also higher for the elderly according to the OFCE study. ibilyk13 / stock.adobe.com
The smaller the agglomeration of residence, the more inflation is strongly felt, notes the OFCE.
Who felt the rise in prices the hardest in 2022? The magnitude of the shock depends mainly on the age and size of the agglomeration of residence, answers the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE) in a study published on Wednesday.
“The older the reference person, the greater their exposureto energy and food prices, say Pierre Madec, Mathieu Plane, and Raul Sampognaro, the three authors of the study. “A household whose reference person is over 65 has an inflation rate 0.6 points higher than average inflation“, measured at 5.2% by INSEE. On the other hand, if the reference person is between 30 and 40 years old, “inflation would be 0.5 points below the average, in line with lower food expenditure in its consumer basket“, adds the OFCE.
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Another finding of economists: the smaller the agglomeration of residence, the more inflation is strongly felt. The average price increase experienced by a household in rural areaswould be 1 point higher than the average, while it is 0.8 points lower in the Paris conurbation“. “Fuel expenditure is higher in small municipalities, as is energy expenditure for housing“, often more spacious outside the big cities and therefore more expensive to heat, explains the OFCE to justify these differences. “If macroeconomic inflation stands at 5.2%, the 10% least exposed households“to the rise in prices in 2022”saw their basket of goods become more expensive by less than 3.4%, compared to 8.5% for the most exposed households», concludes the Observatory.
The heterogeneity of the inflation shock suffered by the Frenchshows the difficulty of organizing a compensation policy based exclusively on transfers conditional on a single factor“, as the level of income for example, notes the study. Non-targeted aid, such as the rebate at the pump or the tariff shield, has in any case considerably attenuated the shock of inflation, according to the OFCE. “The loss of average purchasing power per household directly linked to the increase in the cost of energy products“is evaluated by the OFCE at 560 euros in 2022, against 1310 euros”in the absence of public devices» mentioned above.
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