Abstrakt
This project employs Czech Household Budget Survey and Consumer Price Index data to create consumer price indices for various population subgroups in the Czech Republic. We find that subgroup-specific inflation rates are very similar to the inflation rate for all the non-elderly population, with the exception of single-parent households, which experienced a higher inflation rate in 2022 than did the other subgroups.
However, the difference was reasonably modest. Importantly, we found that inflation issuing from housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels is significantly higher for low-income and single-parent households than for high-income and two-parent households.
The difference is particularly significant for single-parent households, for which inflation due to increases in housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuel costs represents 40.15 percent of their overall inflation burden compared to 28.44 percent for two-parent households. This finding suggests that the recent increases in electricity and gas prices may exert particularly harmful effects on single-parent households unless the government provides the support necessary to mitigate the adverse effects of rising prices.
While all households are being affected by rising living costs, single-parent and low-income households should be prioritized in terms of support. In addition, we calculated that for low-income and single-parent households, the total loss of purchasing power due to inflation amounts to CZK 15,179 and CZK 20,445, respectively.