Inflation making women unhappy: survey
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Unhappy shopper: Inflation is having an impact on women's wellbeing. (File photo) (iStockphoto)
Anyone with a mortgage or struggling with rising inflation will be counting on the Reserve Bank to ease the interest rates squeeze when the board meets next Tuesday.
But according to a recent survey from Australian Unity, while many households are at breaking point, women are hurting more than men.
The study's author, Professor Bob Cummins of Deakin University, says men still regard themselves as breadwinners, with women becoming increasingly stressed as they manage the purse strings.
"Females are the frontline purchasers for most households. They're actually the people who know the price of a loaf of bread," he said.
"But many females who actually do the shopping on a regular basis would know those prices and would be aware of the fact that when they go to the supermarket on a regular basis now, they're finding that the money that they take there just doesn't buy them the goods that it used to."
Professor Cummins says this makes women more in touch with the tangible effects of inflation.
"I think they are, and I suspect that the males are still very much in the traditional role of earning the money and they're actually feeling quite good about themselves, because over the past few years the wages have kept going up in Australia in most jobs," he said.
"But what they don't realise is the other side of the equation, that it's not just that they're earning more; it's that their money is buying less."
Men are from Mars
The old saying that men are from Mars and women are from Venus could definitely hold true when it comes to the economy and how it translates to a person's wellbeing.
"[Men and women] are most definitely different and I think a lot of men will get their wellbeing out of the earning that they do and that's what their concentration will be," Professor Cummins said.
"But the females are much more in touch with reality about what that money is actually doing for the family."
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is charged with the responsibility of trying to keep inflation within its target band of between 2 and 3 per cent.
On Tuesday, the RBA will meet and hopefully announce a cut that will ease the pressure on many Australians.
According to the Australian Unity survey, the possibility of a rates cut will be much more psychologically important than previously thought.
"Now, the importance of this is being exemplified through these results, that's showing that this does seem to be really, very strongly attached to the wellbeing of Australians," Professor Cummins said.
"So it's looking to me as though we're entering a different phase in Australia, one that we haven't encountered in our surveys over the past seven years, in which we're looking at inflation as something which is not benign and which is definitely starting to damage people.
"And if it keeps on going like this then our next survey is going to show an even more dramatic fall in wellbeing, I suspect."
