Physics

Sociology

Business

Population

Demographic economics

Demography

Marketing

Psychology

Economics

Affect (linguistics)

Inflation (cosmology)

Theoretical physics

Monetary economics

Grocery shopping

Gender gap

Grocery store

Communication

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Significance Women and men expect systematically different levels of future inflation. This gender expectations gap can be detrimental for women’s economic choices and long-term wealth, because it might reduce the effectiveness of economic policies, induce stress, and affect women’s well being. Using data for a representative US population, we document that traditional gender roles, rather than innate characteristics, shape the gender expectations gap. By doing most of the grocery shopping for their households, women observe different price signals than men. Because grocery prices are volatile and positive price changes are especially memorable, women end up expecting systematically higher inflation than men. The gender expectations gap disappears if grocery chores are distributed equally within households.

Gender roles produce divergent economic expectations