Seyfettin Gürsel and Melike Kökkızıl
Executive Summary
Inflation calculated by Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) captures inflation faced by a representative household since it covers all income and expenditure groups in Turkey. However, inflation faced by households of different income and expenditure groups may differ since different groups consume different baskets of goods and services. In this research brief, different price indices are calculated for each income quintile from the poorest to richest by using consumption data from the Household Budget Surveys (HBS) released by TurkStat for the period 2003-2013. The results indicate that poorer households considerably face higher inflation rates than richer ones in the last six years. The poorest households (the lowest income quintile) face higher inflation levels since price increases in food are above average increase in prices during this period. While the inflation difference between the top income quintile and the lowest evolved in favor of the poor householdsfrom 2003 to 2006, inflation difference between the poor and the rich has reached 13 percent pointsagainst the poor households by the end of 2013 due to the global food price shocks.
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