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You would have to be in the retirement zone to be able to remember the last time inflation was in negative territory.

That was in the late 1950s, when Harold Macmillan was telling Britain "you've never had it so good".

You may, of course, have been displaying an unnatural childhood fascination with economics, in which case I apologise for being so ageist.

But if you're finding life is rendering you chronologically-enhanced, you may find inflation is not as low as it's reported.

The headline figures show the consumer price index, at 2.2%, getting closer to the Government's target of 2%.

Strip out housing costs, including mortgage payments, and you find the retail price index edging up from its dangerous deflationary territory, but still at minus 1.1%.

However, that's just the average. Quite apart from statisticians habit of confusing us by seasonally adjusting, you can also adjust for age.

By calculating the average balance of spending for different age groups, you can get to an inflation rate for the elderly and for younger age groups.

And inflation, over the past year or so, has been particularly punishing for older people, as they spend a larger share of their income on electricity, gas and food.

Although the worst of those spikes are over, for now at least, there is still inflation feeding through in those commodities.

Alliance Trust, the Dundee-based asset manager, tracks how inflation looks to those of advanced years.

It reckons the oldest age bracket spends 7% of its income on electricity and gas bills, whereas those under 30 spend only 3% on household energy.

With food inflation still running at 8%, the over-75s are thought to spend 16% of their income feeding themselves, whereas the under 30s spend only 9%.

The under 30s spend a higher share of their income on clothes and electronics.

Their threads take up 6% of their budgets, whereas the elderly spend only 4%.

Over the past year, the price of clothes has fallen by more than 9% and audio-visual goods are down 12%.

Allowing for that different basket of goods and services, Alliance Trust researchers found the inflation rate falling for the over-75s, but it's still far above the level for those under 30.

The May inflation rate for senior citizens was at 3.6%, down from the April figure of 3.9%.

Aged 65 to 74, the inflation rate was eating into pensions to the tune of 3%.

And to that pain can be added the impact of the past few months of rapidly falling interest payments for those who rely on savings.

According to this same analysis, the most recent figures show the under 30s facing inflation at only 2.1%, just below the all-age average.

Shona Dobbie, head of Alliance Trust's research centre, says the gap continues to cause concern, "as this clearly highlights the extent to which the elderly are not reaping the same benefits of easing prices".

Last autumn, however, there was much more room for concern.

With the energy and food price spikes feeding through to worrying levels of inflation for the whole economy, the under-30s faced 5% inflation, while those over 75 were nearing 8%. It made for a particularly cold winter for some.