Men are from Mars, women shop at Gelsons (or Wegmans)

Caroline Baum at Bloomberg reports on two vastly different views on the rate of inflation held by two vastly different sexes.

Those who are rich, married, white and middle-aged have lower inflation perceptions and expectations than those who are poor, single, non-white and young. That seems almost intuitive: Society's "haves" are better positioned to endure cost-of- living increases than the "have-nots."

Yet even after holding income, age, education, race and marital status constant, "men and women hold very different views on the rate at which prices are changing." [Michael] Bryan writes in a November 2001 commentary, "The Curiously Different Inflation Perspectives of Men and Women." Women consistently think inflation is 1.9 percentage points higher than men, and they expect prices to rise 2.1 percentage points more than men.

The suggested explanations all seem to make sense - women still do most of the grocery shopping and would tend to notice rising food prices while men are more likely to purchase big ticket items such as consumer electronics where prices are generally level or falling after quality adjustments are factored in.

Plus, the fairer sex probably worries a bit more - maybe keeping a closer eye on the checkbook and credit card balances.

One thing that's puzzled me for some time now is why the two most important measures of consumers' inflation expectations - the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index and the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index - are so far apart.

The most recent one-year inflation expectation for the former was 5.1 percent but only only 3.4 percent for the latter. Does the Conference Board ask only women and the University of Michigan ask only men?

More importantly, with the dizzying array of goods and services available to consumers compounded by the complexity of their pricing, does anyone really know whether "inflation" is 3 percent, 5 percent, or 10 percent?

Why do they even bother asking?

Except for that weekly trip to the gas station, the one where former Fed chief Alan Greenspan lamented "everyone can measure rising prices", the public is, for the most part, baffled by inflation.