The consumer price index (CPI) for retiree households inched up marginally by 0.1% in 2020, compared to that of 2019, according to figures released by the Department of Statistics Singapore (SingStat).
SingStat, on July 13, released an Occasional Paper on “The CPI for Retiree Households and Households with Young Children (2019 as Base Year)”.
The inflation rate for retiree households is higher than that compared to other household groups, according to the paper.
For instance, general households saw CPI drop by 0.2% y-o-y, while households comprising that of the lowest 20% income grow saw a 0.1% drop y-o-y. The middle 60% income group and the highest 20% income group saw dips of 0.1% and 0.2% y-o-y respectively.
The higher CPI rate for retiree households was partly due to the higher costs of food, excluding food serving services, as well as hospital services. This was mitigated by the decline in the costs of discretionary expenditure items such as private transport.
The enhancement of pre-school subsidies in January 2020, which lowered the CPI for most of the other household groups, had no impact on retiree households.
The enhancement of the subsidies, did, however, impact the lower CPI for households with young children, which fell by 0.4% y-o-y in 2020. The decline was the largest across all household groups.
This was due to the larger proportion of pre-school education expenditure in that household.
The top expenditure items for retiree households in 2020 were housing and utilities, food and healthcare, same as that of 2019. On the other hand, the top items for households with young children in 2020 were housing and utilities, transport and food, which is also the same as that of 2019.
Photo: Bloomberg
