Coping with inflation: Social perceptions and ordinary measures of price increases in contemporary Argentina

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, in a significant part of the world, the cost of living has once again become a central issue in the agenda of both governments and populations. However, in some countries, inflation has been a distinctive feature of the economy for more than a decade, which the pandemic has only exacerbated. Argentina is one of these countries. Based on a 4-year qualitative investigation carried out among low- and middle-income households in a mid-sized city in Buenos Aires province and complemented by observations made among senior households in the same province during the pandemic, this article seeks two purposes: on one hand, to analyze how price rise appears in people’s concerns when we focus on domestic economies and, on the other, to account for the ways of measuring inflation and evaluating its impacts on such economies. The document intends to contribute to the construction of a perspective on inflation that is attentive to how people act and think about the economy in their everyday lives.