How normal people think about inflation
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Do Americans think of inflation as a rise in prices? Or, per my story from last month, has the vernacular meaning of the word changed to just mean high prices? The good folks at Morning Consult surveyed 2,201 Americans to find out.
The big picture: Some 86% of Americans are worried about inflation, and many of them still define inflation as being a rise in prices, rather than just high prices. But they tend to look at that rise over four years, not one.
- And they're just as worried about high prices as they are about inflation — two things that often get conflated under the "inflation" banner.
What they found: Less than half of Americans say that inflation is an increase in prices for goods and services. Even among consumers with at least a college degree, the figure is only 53%.
- The majority was split between people who think that inflation means prices being high (about 20%) and those who think it means prices outpacing wages (about a third).
- 69% think inflation is higher today than it was a year ago. (They're wrong about that; in fact, consumer prices didn't rise at all in May.)
Between the lines: Only 23% of Americans think that inflation refers to the rise in prices over the past year. 28% think of it as being the rise in prices over four years, and fully 60% have a frame of reference that's two years or longer.
The bottom line: 87% of consumers report that they're worried about prices remaining above pre-pandemic levels.
- In everyday speech, the word they use to refer to that phenomenon is "inflation."
