Inflation Hits Different for Men vs. Women, But Why?

Grocery store runs aren’t as fun as they used to be, and I’ve got the math to prove it. Last night I was at Trader Joe’s reaching for extra virgin olive oil when I found, for the first time since discovering EVOO, that every bottle was now squarely priced in the double digits. Things didn’t get much better when I stocked up later on all my favorite Reese's peanut butter chocolates in honor of Halloween, whose prices continue to creep even as their packaging continues to shrink. At last check, economists had the latest inflation rates pinned at 2.9%, with no signs of slowing down.

Things have gotten so out of hand that they’ve inspired their own TikTok trends. Earlier this year, “No Buy 2025” was blowing up FYPs everywhere after last season’s “Rat Boy Summer” and obsession over low taper fades. The days of New Year's Resolutions involving merely more clean eating or rack time at the gym seem quaint by comparison to this new world order, where hordes of Americans are lowkey vowing to not do anything that involves spending money at all.

For Halloween this year, I’m thinking of cosplaying a woman for whom money is no object while grocery shopping.

Source: TBD Tuyen/ Pexels

The struggle is real, but more real for some than others

The struggle is real, as they say, but apparently it’s more real for one half of the population than the other. CNN pointed this out awhile back when they casually noted that most of the Tiktok influencers heralding “No Buy 2025” were women. Rules for such an austere year of living out #underconsumptioncore included rules like no new clothes, beauty products, jewelry, tech, takeout, decor, books or doing things that involve cancellation fees.

The landscape remains oddly skewed when you pan out beyond the viral trends on everyone’s favorite social media platform. My local “Buy Nothing” group—the sole reason I bother with a Facebook account—boasts approximately the same demographics as your average all girls school: there are men around, sure, but they are few and far in between. The extreme couponers who’ve been around for years with the dedicated blogs to match (Hip2Save, MoneySavingMom, HappyMoneySaver to just name a few) also appear to share the same pronouns. Even my favorite comedian’s (@NateBargatze) funniest bits about his household’s efforts to save a buck evolve around the frugal efforts of his wife Laura and not him.

Studies show: Women expect worse inflation, but why?

Of course, anecdotal evidence doesn’t make something true (contrary to what the demagogues of today are telling you). So leave it to a trio of empiricists to demonstrate that what you’ve seen online actually belies a larger phenomenon: Women register inflation more than men, and they’ve got the data to back it up.

In their sample of large scale survey data of married couples across America, the researchers found that women expected more inflation than men. For better or worse, everyone’s expectations were worse than reality, but the gap was especially pronounced for wives: a gap that amounted to a quarter of the Federal Reserve’s target inflation rate.

Gender gaps abound in everything from wages to time to whether you believe in vaccines but the fact that women are extra sensitive to inflation seems to fly in the face all the stereotypes surrounding how much this gender allegedly loves to spend money.

Mystery solved: Who does the grocery shopping?

The mystery of why this is the case becomes clear as soon as you look at who is doing the grocery shopping. As D’Acunto and his colleagues discovered, women frequently do the bulk of the grocery shopping. Ask anyone who is still traumatized by the price of eggs during avian flu season earlier this year, and they can tell you: Grocery prices are notoriously volatile. As the ones charged with their households’ weekly food runs, women run up against this volatility on a weekly basis and it’s messing with their economic expectations.

On the bright side, households who managed to split the shopping duties evenly between the genders didn’t show any of this gap. So if inflation is keeping you up at night, the fix is surprisingly simple: just get your other half to go to the grocery store. If all else fails, just close your eyes while ordering from Instacart.

Next time you run out of toilet paper, send your significant other so they can stress about inflation instead.

Source: Joachim Schnürle / Unsplash