People in the UK are among the least confident that financial authorities will quickly bring inflation under control, according to a survey of 29 countries around the world by Ipsos MORI and seen by the Financial Times.
The results showed that six in ten people surveyed in May believed it would take at least a year for inflation to return to what they thought were normal levels, with only Swedish respondents showing a higher level.
The figures confirm concerns at the Bank of England that the UK is now suffering from prices and wages rising upwards in a process that will keep consumer price inflation higher for longer.
The central bank hopes, in data to be published on Wednesday, that a significant drop in the official rate of inflation in the consumer price index for April will help change attitudes and ease fears of persistently rapid price hikes.
In the Ipsos MORI poll, conducted this month, 60 percent of respondents in the UK said they believed it would take more than a year to return inflation to normal levels, the same percentage as in the Netherlands and less than 64 percent. People in Sweden who shared these concerns.
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Across all other countries surveyed, an average of 46 percent said it would take more than 12 months to bring inflation down again.
The UK population result is in line with the Bank of England’s forecast that inflation will return to its 2 per cent target at the end of 2024 or at the beginning of 2025.
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With inflation high and likely to be flat, UK households were also the most gloomy about their levels of disposable income of all the countries surveyed.
Some 46 per cent of Britons surveyed believe their disposable income – defined in the survey as after taxes and paying living expenses bills – will decrease over the next year.
“The British view of the cost-of-living crisis is much more negative than the overall global picture,” said Mike Clemens, researcher at Ipsos MORI.
UK households are facing higher costs and higher taxes due to a freeze on income tax thresholds and provisions until 2028, which has prompted millions more to pay income tax at the main rate of 20 per cent and at higher rates.
However, when UK participants were asked about their standard of living, they were more likely to say that it would fall below the global average, but that it was not an anomaly as far as disposable income.
The Ipsos Mori results provide an insight into the inflation attitudes of the public ahead of the Bank of England’s next quarterly survey, which will be published in mid-June.
In the results of the BoE’s February survey, members of the public were well aware of rising inflation, with the average respondent saying the inflation rate had been 9.2 percent over the past year, close to the applicable consumer price inflation rate of 10.4 percent. in feb.
The average respondent expected inflation to be 3.9 percent next year and then stabilize at 3 percent, still one percentage point higher than the central bank’s target of 2 percent.
