Estimated Inflation by Household Characteristics September 2026

This release is an update to the estimates of inflation broken down by various household characteristics. The previous versions of this analysis on Estimated Inflation by Household Characteristics were published as research papers for March 2022, June 2022, September 2022. A shorter version of the research paper was published for March 2023 and September 2023 and they are also available at the link above. An updated release for June 2026 was published last month which followed a similar format as the September 2023 research paper except that the information provided in the tables of the Detailed Results chapter are combined and presented in Tables 2 to 4 at the end of the Key Findings chapter. This new release for September 2026 follows the same format as the June 2026 release.

The results presented in this release are based on combining Consumer Price Index (CPI) subindices with detailed expenditure data from the 2022 to 2023 Household Budget Survey (HBS) to calculate an estimated inflation rate in the five years from September 2021 to September 2026, for the following groups:

• Households grouped by equivalised gross household income (quartiles)
• Households grouped by type of tenure
• Urban and rural households
• Households grouped by the age of the household reference person
• Households with or without children
• Households with one, two, three of more adults

The method used is described in the Appendix of the original research paper for March 2022.

• For additional background information please see the Introduction chapter of the September 2022 research paper.
• This release is published under the CSO Frontier Series Banner which indicates that there are some limitations to the analysis. For more information please see the Limitations section of the September 2022 research paper.
• The lower achieved sample size for the most recent Household Budget Survey (HBS) conducted in 2022 and 2023 have resulted in some of the classifications for this research needing to change in the releases for 2026 from previous iterations of this work:
  • Results by household income are presented by income quartile (four groups) instead of income decile (10 groups).
  • It was not possible to split out households that are rented privately from those rented from local authorities so there is now just a “Rented” group in the tenure breakdown.
  • We had to change the household composition from the previous six groups to two separate classifications: children in household (yes or no) and number of adults in household (one, two, three or more).

See also:

Consumer Price Index - Background Notes

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) Explained - Information Note

Ireland’s Consumer Price Index - Video

Household Budget Survey

Household Budget Survey – Methodological Documents