Many sectors are registering price hikes, including culture. Increases above the general inflation were observed at the EU level in some cultural goods, including newspapers and periodicals, when comparing July 2022 with July 2021. These increases were observed in all Member States, except for Greece.
Compared with July 2021, in July 2022, there was an increase in the 'museums, libraries, zoological gardens' sub-index among the EU Member States. Nevertheless, prices remained stable in Cyprus and Luxembourg while a decrease was reported for Malta.
Source dataset: prc_hicp_midx
While in July 2021 the all-items HICP and the cultural services indices stood at similar levels (108.68 and 106.86, respectively), in July 2022, the all-items HICP index stood at 119.31 and cultural services at 109.77, showing a clear divergent tendency.
Despite the price increases noted, price decreases were observed for some items. Between July 2021 and July 2022, this concerned products from 'equipment for the reception, recording and reproduction of sound and picture'.
Source dataset: prc_hicp_aind
Between 2016 and 2021, the highest average growth rate in prices of cultural products at the EU level was recorded by the ‘newspapers and periodicals’ sub-index. This sub-index grew at an average pace of 4.0 % per year, and its growth rate was 2.4 percentage points above all-items HICP. This shows that inflation in this group of products was higher than the overall inflation in consumer prices.
For two other cultural sub-indices, ‘cultural services’ and ‘books’, the growth rate was positive but lower than all-items HICP. In turn, the largest rate of decrease between 2016 and 2021 was recorded by the sub-index ‘equipment for the reception, recording and reproduction of sound and picture’ (on average -4.1% annually).
The 2020-2021 period shows that the rate of decrease of the sub-index ‘equipment for the reception, recording and reproduction of sound and picture’ has slowed significantly. There has also been a slight increase for the sub-index ‘information processing equipment’ in this period.
For more information:
- Statistics Explained article on consumer prices of cultural goods and services
- Dedicated section on harmonised indices of consumer prices
- Database on harmonised indices of consumer prices
Methodological notes:
- Average indices reflect changes in EU membership (when a Member State joins the EU, its HICPs are chained with the aggregate index at the time of the accession).
- Cultural services: includes cinemas, theatres, concerts, museums, libraries, zoological gardens, television and radio fees, hire of equipment and accessories for culture.
- Recording media: includes CDs, DVDs, tapes, cassettes, etc.
- Equipment for the reception, recording and reproduction of sound and picture: includes TV sets, CD players, stereo systems, radios, etc.
- Equipment for the reception, recording and reproduction of sound and vision: includes television sets, video recorders and DVD recorders and players, "digiboxes", home theatre systems, video projectors, satellite receivers, blu-ray players, sound and vision players (with video function) and hard disk recorders.
- Information processing equipment: includes personal computers, computer software packages, calculators and typewriters.
- 2022 annual data expected in March 2023.
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