Statistics Insights: Inflation is an interactive publication produced by the European Central Bank and the national central banks of the Eurosystem. The publication aims to make it easier to understand, use and compare euro area and national statistics. It presents the statistics visually, catering for colour blindness, uses reader-friendly terms, is digitally reusable via the embed function and is available in 23 EU languages.
Information on data
The data are updated in real time and available from the Statistical Data Warehouse.
The inflation data are produced by Eurostat, together with the national statistical institutes, and are available here.
The data for the second chart in Section 3.1 and the charts in Section 3.2 are produced by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs and are available here.
Disclaimer
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the work and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction (with the exception of the personal inflation calculator that cannot be used for any commercial purpose, including distributing, sublicensing and/or selling copies of original or modified code), including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions.
The software is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind.
In no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the Software or the use of or other dealings in the Software.
The Software is built upon and made available by Eurostat and Lietuvos bankas. See also the Eurostat Disclaimer and the Terms of use of Lietuvos bankas.
The ECB/Eurostat/Lietuvos bankas take no responsibility for any replication of the content of the Software, or any other form of redistribution.
Cover photo © monticello, Xsandra, guenterguni, Rost-9D, scanrail, SergeiKorolko/iStock
Chapter 2.2 photo “Antique refrigerator” © jgroup/iStock
Chapter 2.2 photo “Modern household refrigerator with control display” © Grassetto/iStock
The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) is committed to providing its statistics free of charge as a public good of high quality irrespective of any subsequent commercial or non-commercial use. All publicly available ESCB statistics may be reused free of charge on the condition that the source is quoted (e.g. “Source: euro area statistics”) and that the statistics (including metadata) are not modified.
Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique
In its task of maintaining price stability in the euro area the ECB takes account of inflation developments. The indicator it uses for monitoring and analysing inflation is the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). This chapter looks more closely at consumer price inflation and the HICP.
Inflation is typically measured using a consumer price index to compare the current prices of goods and services with their prices in earlier periods. In the euro area, the index used is the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP). It is calculated by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
The HICP is calculated on the basis of a “shopping basket” that contains goods and services that people typically spend their money on – goods such as food, clothes and cars, and services such as mobile phone charges, train tickets and rents for housing. Each of the euro area countries collects the prices of goods and services in the categories included in their respective national HICP baskets (up to 295 categories). Together they provide a good picture of price changes in the euro area economy as a whole.
The HICP is “harmonised”. This means that all the euro area countries have the same categories of goods and services in their baskets and use the same calculation methods. The composition of the HICP has been designed in such a way that the overall shopping basket remains representative in all countries, while reflecting differences in consumption patterns across the euro area. For example, the consumption of products such as olive oil and butter differs across countries: olive oil is purchased more frequently in the south of Europe whereas butter is more often purchased in the northern part of Europe. These differences are taken into account by giving each product a certain “weight” in the national shopping basket that reflects the product’s share of households’ spending in the country concerned.
Have a look at the weights for the goods and services shown in the chart entitled “Consumption shares across countries” to see how they differ from one country to another. Do you think that your personal shopping basket differs from your country average? You can calculate your own inflation rate in Chapter 4. Why not give it a try?
2.1.1 Special consideration on the housing component of the HICP
Consumer price indices include rents for housing as this is a significant regular expenditure. They also include expenditures for heating, electricity, water, wastewater and even the cost of your rubbish collection service. There are still some issues related to expenditure on houses and flats owned by the people who live in them (“owner-occupied” housing) and the inclusion of these costs in the calculation of the HICP. As part of the ECB’s monetary policy strategy review, the Governing Council of the ECB decided to recommend a roadmap to include owner-occupied housing in the HICP. This would further enhance the representativeness of the HICP and improve its cross-country comparability.
Click to enlarge and interact
Click to enlarge and interact