Inflation, Economic Growth, and Household Consumption in ASEAN-10: A Longitudinal Panel Analysis, 1987–2025

Abstract

This study examines the historical performance of consumer-price inflation and the association of real economic growth with real household consumption across ten ASEAN economies during 1987–2025. The analysis uses annual World Development Indicators (WDI) data retrieved in October 2026. Descriptive statistics cover an unbalanced universe of 390 country-year records; the two-way fixed-effects household-consumption model comprises 308 complete records from nine economies because Myanmar lacks the required household consumption series. Inflation comparisons are additionally presented for the common 1996–2019 period. In that window, mean annual inflation ranges from 0.36% in Brunei Darussalam to approximately 16.24% in Lao PDR. In the Philippines, the consumer price index rose by approximately 8.14 times from 1987 to 2025, equivalent to a 5.67% annualized change between observed index endpoints. The baseline fixed-effects coefficient for real GDP per capita growth is positive (β = 0.773), whereas the contemporaneous CPI inflation coefficient is also positive (β = 0.158). Bootstrap and alternative-covariance checks support the baseline associations; however, the inflation estimate is not robust to using lagged inflation or restricting the panel to 2001–2016. Exploratory residual cross-country dependence diagnostics are sensitive to the inclusion of year fixed effects. The findings support distinguishing economic output, consumer-price dynamics, and realized household consumption in regional development assessments, without implying causal effects or uniform household welfare gains.