Human Development and Life Expectancy Perfectly Predict Inflation

Abstract

In 2022 the Federal Reserve, economists, and stock market traders railed about “the worst inflation in 100 years”. The present article updates this alarm by demonstrating that human development and global life expectancy alone predict 99.66% of the American CPI before the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war, and recession, suggesting that inflation may be an uncontrollable phenomenon. The present article regresses and correlates the American Consumer Price Index on 11 global assets over the trans-century period 1991-2017. The Gaussian R2s exceed .9000 and the correlations exceed .9200, suggesting that human development and global life expectancy have raised consumer affluence, demand, and prices over this modern period.