French households and inflation: the “scars” of the 2022 23 inflation shock
Bulletin No. 265, article 4. At the end of 2025, the Banque de France and the polling institute CSA conducted a survey of 4,000 French residents. The aim was to examine how perceptions of inflation changed when prices began to ease after the 2022 23 shock. At the end of 2025, the “scars” of the inflationary episode were still visible in French households’ inflation perceptions. Whereas prices in fact rose very moderately in 2025, by less than 1% year on year, compared with 5% growth in 2022 and 2023, household inflation perceptions took longer to decline. This article explores why the inflationary episode of 2022 23 could have had such lasting effects on (i) households’ perception of inflation, and (ii) their spending and saving behaviour, particularly for households who felt their purchasing power had declined significantly between 2021 and 2025.
In 2025, consumer price inflation fell sharply in France after the wave of high inflation in 2022 23. Prices increased by an average of just 0.8% year on year, compared with growth of 2% in 2024 and 5% in both 2022 and 2023. France therefore had one of the lowest inflation rates in the euro area in 2025. However, the Banque de France CSA survey conducted in November 2025 found that “inflation and purchasing power” remained one of the top two economic priorities for a majority of respondents.
Although households are known to overestimate actual inflation, the gap between perceived and measured inflation widened during the disinflationary phase. In other words, households perceived prices to be slowing much less than they actually were. The divergence is often attributed to the fact that perceptions are more sensitive to price increases for everyday items, such as food or fuel. Yet between 2023 and 2025, prices of everyday goods rose only moderately, and in the case of fuel they even declined. So how can we explain the widening gap between perceptions of inflation and the measured rate?
To better understand the phenomenon, the Banque de France and the polling institute CSA surveyed over 4,000 households between 3 November and 5 December 2025. Respondents were aged 18 and over and formed a representative sample of the French population in terms of age, gender, region and educational attainment. They were asked around 20 questions covering inflation, changes in specific prices, income, and spending and saving behaviour. This was the fourth survey in the series, following the earlier rounds conducted between 2022 and 2024 at key stages in the inflationary wave (see Bignon and Gautier, 2022; Bignon and Gautier, 2023, and Bignon and Gautier, 2025). For the first time, the survey showed that the inflationary episode of 2022 23 had left scars on households’ perceptions of inflation and purchasing power, influencing their spending and saving behaviour.
This scarring effect is reflected in the strong correlation between households’ inflation perceptions at the end of 2025 and their recollection of cumulative inflation over the previous four years. The phenomenon is particularly evident in the case of food. Although food inflation was only around 1% in 2025, households continued to perceive it as being significantly higher, under the impact of the cumulative increase of around 20% in food prices from 2021 to 2025. Households also generally remember price increases more readily than declines. …
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Updated on the 17th of September 2026