According to a recent study, low-income families continue to suffer particularly badly from high inflation. While the cost of living for German households as a whole was 10.4 percent higher than the previous year’s level in October, low-income families even had to pay 11.8 percent more for their typical purchases.
This emerges from the current inflation monitor of the Institute for Macroeconomics and Business Cycle Research (IMK) of the trade union Hans Böckler Foundation. The price increases hit single households with high incomes the least. Their cost of living increased by 8.4 percent.
“The war-related price jumps in energy and food continue to dominate inflation. As in the previous months, they put a particularly heavy burden on households with lower incomes,” stressed the authors of the study, Silke Tober and Lukas Endres. According to the study, those living alone with low incomes also suffered significantly more than the average from the high price increases. Their cost of living increased by 11.4 percent.
The background: The currently biggest price drivers – household energy and food – have a significantly larger share of the total shopping basket for households with low to middle incomes than for the wealthy.
