Consumer Price Index: Fourth Quarter 2011. February 2012, Volume 2, Number 15. Focus on Prices and Spending

摘要

The report discusses the use of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in adjusting Federal income tax brackets and other Federal tax parameters. The CPI is a measure of the average change in prices over time of goods and services purchased by households. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes CPIs for two population groups: (1) The CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), which covers households of wage earners and clerical workers that comprise approximately 32 percent of the total population and (2) the CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) and the Chained CPI for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U), which cover approximately 87 percent of the total population and include, in addition to wage earner and clerical worker households, groups such as professional, managerial, and technical workers, the self-employed, short-term workers, the unemployed, and retirees and others not in the labor force. The CPIs are based on prices of food, clothing, shelter, and fuels, transportation fares, charges for doctors and dentists services, drugs, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living.