Focus on Pricing and Spending. Consumer Price Index: Fourth Quarter, 2010. Volume 1, Number 15

摘要

The Consumer Price Index is, in fact, a large family of indexes with thousands of indexes published each month. The broadest measure of inflation, called the All items CPI, includes all goods and services that consumers purchase. It is the All items CPI that is used in Social Security cost of living adjustments (COLAs), and to adjust federal income tax brackets. Besides the All items index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes CPIs for many categories of goods, including eight major groups and hundreds of narrower categories of goods and services. In addition, the CPI also publishes many special aggregates. These include the energy index, indexes for commodities and services, and a number of indexes that exclude particular categories, such as all items less shelter and all items less medical care. These special aggregates are not tied to any legislation or used to adjust official payments.