Shrinkflation, that sneaky economic phenomenon where companies quietly reduce the size, quantity, or sometimes even the quality of a product while keeping the retail price the same—or only slightly increasing it—has become a frustrating reality for consumers worldwide, effectively acting as a hidden form of inflation that chips away at purchasing power without the immediate sting of a blatant price hike. Also known as package downsizing, weight-out, or skimpflation in its more extreme forms (where quality suffers too), shrinkflation is essentially a stealthy way for manufacturers to pass on rising production costs to buyers, who often don’t notice the change until their favorite bag of chips runs out faster or their toilet paper roll feels noticeably thinner. The term itself is a clever portmanteau of “shrink” and “inflation,” and while the practice dates back centuries, the modern word was popularized in the late 2000s and early 2010s. British economist Pippa Malmgren is widely credited with coining or popularizing “shrinkflation” in its current usage around 2009–2015, describing it as a counterpart to overt price inflation in which the product itself shrinks rather than the dollar stretching further.

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