FRANKFURT, (Reuters) – The European Central Bank is less trusted by poor households, especially in areas with higher income inequality, a study from the ECB showed Wednesday.

The ECB, along with many other world-leading central banks, have come under criticism for the policies they adopted over the past decade of massive bond purchases as well as low interest rates.

This policy was designed to avoid deflation in the aftermath of the global financial crises. It has been blamed for an explosion in home prices which has excluded the poorer from the market and, more recently, for a surge in consumer price.

The report by the ECB economists showed that households in euro zones who make less than 20,000 EUR per annum or believe that there is too much inequality have the lowest trust levels in the ECB, the national central banks, and the European Commission.

Six euro area countries were surveyed and found that household income increased with trust in the ECB, European Parliament, and Commission.

Authors Stephanie Bergbauer and Alessandro Giovannini wrote that “this relationship is resilient to differences in age and gender, education level, and employment status.”

This relationship was stronger in Italy where there is more inequality, but weakest in the more egalitarian Netherlands.

GRAPHIC: Poor people trust the ECB less, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/lgvdwgnolpo/trust%20in%20ECB.png The study also found a relationship between a country’s inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficients of post-tax income, and how much citizens trust the ECB.

In separate reports published this week, the ECB found that households with the lowest income were bearing the brunt of a recent surge in energy prices https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/economic-bulletin/articles/2022/html/ecb.ebart202203_01~f7466627b4.en.html.

This has pushed up inflation to a record 7.4% in the euro zone last month, vastly exceeding the ECB’s own estimates https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/html/index.en.html and fuelling criticism of the central bank by some commentators and politicians.