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May 1994, Vol. 117, No. 5

Experimental price index for elderly consumers

Nathan Amble and Ken Stewart


T he Consumer Price Index (CPI) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the average change in prices over time for a fixed market basket of goods and services for two population groups. The CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) represents the spending habits of about 80 percent of the population of the United States. The CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) is a subset of the CPI-U and represents about 32 percent of the total U.S. population.

The 1987 amendments to the Older Americans Act of 1965 directed BLS to develop an experimental index for a third population of consumers: those 62 years of age and older. In its 1988 report to Congress, BLS observed that from December 1982 to December 1987, the experimental consumer price idea for older Americans rose slightly faster than the CPI-U and CPI-W.1 (See table 1.)

This article updates the analysis of the behavior of the experimental index for older Americans for the period from December 1987 through December 1993. Over this 6-year period, the experimental price index rose 28.7 percent, slightly more than the increases of 26.3 percent for the CPI-U and 25.5 percent for the CPI-W


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Footnotes
1 Charles C. Mason, "An Analysis of the Rates of Inflation Affecting Older Americans Based on an Experimental Reweighted Consumer Price Index," report presented to Congress, June 1988. During the period from December 1982 through December 1987, the CPI-U rose 18.2 percent, the CPI-W increased 16.5 percent, and the experimental index for older Americans grew 19.5 percent. Over the 11-year period from December 1982 through December 1993, the CPI-U rose 49.4 percent, the CPI-W increased 46.2 percent, and the experimental CPI for older Americans grew 53.8 percent.


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Consumer Price Index
 
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