Middle-income households in 2022 have seen inflation eat into a greater share of their incomes compared with low- and high-income households, according to a report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The report’s analysis considered an average basket of goods and services purchased by households in each fifth of the income distribution in 2019, before large shifts in consumption patterns during the Covid-19 pandemic. It found that households in the second, middle and fourth income quintiles have seen the share of their income—derived from labor, business and other nongovernmental sources—that would purchase that basket increase in 2022. Meanwhile, households in the lowest and highest quintiles have seen their share of their income that would purchase the basket fall this year.
