EconomyPrices
What do households expect inflation to be, and are they right?
In September 2026 the median household in RBI's survey expected prices to rise 10.0% over the next year, against current inflation of 4.5%. Households have expected far more inflation than came: over 72 surveys, by 5.4 points on average.
Written for anyone wondering why the RBI watches what households expect, and how much weight to give it. Survey to September 2026.
What households think inflation is
Asked what inflation is now, households in September 2026 said 8.4%. Official CPI inflation that month was 4.5%. In the median survey since 2012 households put current inflation 3.4 points above the official rate.
Perceived and measured inflation
Median answer in each RBI survey round, against CPI inflation in the survey month.
How to read it. Households answer from the prices they notice most, such as vegetables, milk and fuel, so their sense of inflation runs well above the index and moves with food prices.
Loading chart…
What they expect
Households expected 9.9% over the next three months and 10.0% over a year in September 2026. The year-ahead answer has ranged from 7.9% (July 2019) to 16.0% (September 2013). Over the years it has risen and fallen with inflation, but always well above it.
Households' expected inflation
Median answer in each RBI survey round, from 2009. The survey ran quarterly at first, every two months later.
How to read it. Watch the direction more than the level. A rise in expectations while measured inflation is steady can mean households are bracing for higher prices.
Loading chart…
Were they right?
We wrote down a test before computing it: compare each survey's year-ahead answer with inflation a year later, and with the latest official print households could have seen. The expectation missed by 5.4 points on average, the latest print by 1.9.
What households expected, and what came
Each survey's year-ahead answer, against CPI inflation twelve months after the survey month.
How to read it. The space between the lines is the miss. Households expected more inflation than came in every one of the 76 surveys with an outcome so far.
Loading chart…
The result. Over 72 surveys from March 2012 to July 2025, households' expectation was 5.4 percentage points too high on average, far beyond chance (t = 11.5). As a forecast it missed by 5.9 points in a typical year against 2.2 for simply taking the latest print, and that gap is also beyond chance (p below 0.001). Both match what we predicted. The rules are in the pre-registration log (C71).
So why does the RBI ask? Not for a forecast. Expectations feed wage demands and pricing, and a sustained rise can make inflation harder to bring down. Read the survey for how households feel about prices and which way that feeling is moving.
Professional forecasters' expectations, from RBI's own survey of them, join this page once that survey is in our data store.
What the numbers can't tell you
- Cities only
- The survey covers urban households in a set of large cities. Rural expectations, where food is a larger share of spending, are not measured.
- Medians of rounded answers
- Respondents tend to give round numbers, so the median moves in steps and small changes between rounds mean little.
- The comparison print
- Fieldwork runs early in the survey month, before that month's CPI release, so the latest print households could have seen is from two months before the survey.
The workings
The question
Data
Every chart has a table view, a CSV download and a link to its published JSON. Bundles are listed in data status.