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
Especially in times of major changes there can be great differences between perceived and measured inflation. These differences may even undermine people’s trust in official statistics.
Such a situation may occur for instance because of a currency changeover, like the adoption of the euro. In many euro area countries, the changeover from the national currency to the euro was associated with extremely high perceived inflation.
The chart entitled “Inflation perceptions versus measured inflation” shows survey data on inflation perceptions from 2004 – two years after the euro replaced the national currencies of the first countries to join the euro area. We can see that there is a large gap between perceived inflation – shown here by the “median”, which is the middle of all the inflation perceptions reported by the people surveyed – and measured inflation. The gap seems to have diminished over time, but it still exists. This means that perceived inflation is still higher than measured inflation in the euro area.
The interactive visual also shows how much inflation perceptions vary – look at the size of the “corridor” around the median. Our individual perceptions of inflation are all different because we all have different shopping patterns. To discover yours, try out the personal inflation calculator in the next chapter.
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