Gender roles and inflation expectations: D’Acunto et al. revisited

Women tend to have higher inflation expectations than men. In a recent article, D’Acunto et al. (2021a) claim to show, with data for the US, that this ‘gender expectations gap’ results primarily, if not solely, from a higher exposure to volatile grocery prices, as women typically do more of the grocery shopping of their household. This note shows that D’Acunto et al.’s analysis is marred by an imprecise measurement of how the two household heads divide the grocery shopping, as well as by several incorrect inferences. The result is that, upon closer scrutiny, D’Acunto et al. fail to conclusively demonstrate that the gender expectations gap may not have other causes than exposure to grocery price signals. We also present survey evidence for the US and Belgium that contradicts their claims.