After almost three years of low inflation, it is advisable to understand which goods or services were most affected, in order to try to understand their effects on consumption and on household conditions. However, the analysis cannot be limited to the last period, but it is necessary to extend the gaze to a longer time horizon.
In many cases, low inflation has simply corrected a price trend that had been particularly strong in the previous period, even in comparison with the other major European economies. The positive effects on consumption of the weak growth of prices, in terms of lower value of spending, could, therefore, result little compared to the increases suffered in previous years.
The weak price growth that affected i foodstuffs it added to an overall 40% increase recorded between 1997 and 2013, a growth 5 percentage points higher than that of France and 12 percentage points higher than that of Germany. In the'clothing e footwear the distance in terms of higher inflation compared to other European economies rises to 20%. Similar considerations concern the chapter of thehome and that of the transport.
Added to these trends is what has happened in other groupings of goods and services, with prices increasing even in recent years. This is, for example, the case with healthcare sector which has seen a price increase of more than 1996% since 70. Overall, despite almost zero inflation over the past three years, the price index in Italy increased by 46% compared to 1996, 12 percentage points more than France and 14 more than Germany.
Despite the low inflation of the last period, the growth of prices in Italy therefore appears to be more sustained than that experienced by the other main European economies. In many cases the price increases have gone to hit families in the most difficult situations.
For example, food price increases weigh more heavily on families with lower incomes, on the more numerous ones as well as on the elderly. Furthermore, the latter suffer more than the others from the sharp increases in prices in the health sector. Younger people are most affected by price hikes in catering, while they reap large benefits from the XNUMX-year deflation of communications.
