U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Department of Labor Logo United States Department of Labor
Dot gov

The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Handbook of Methods Consumer Price Index More Info

Consumer Price Index: More Info

Additional information on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is available on the CPI website: www.bls.gov/cpi.

CPI data are available on the BLS website:

For some of our common questions and answers see www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm.

Technical references

Aizcorbe, Ana M., and Patrick C. Jackman. “The commodity substitution effect in CPI data, 1982–91.” Monthly Labor Review, December 1993, pp. 25–33.

Blair, Caitlin. "Constructing a PCE-Weighted Consumer Price Index." National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. 19582. October 2013.

Brown, Craig and Anya Stockburger. "Item replacement and quality change in apparel price indexes." Monthly Labor Review, December 2006, pp. 35-45

Cage, Robert. “New methodology for selecting outlet samples.” Monthly Labor Review, December 1996, pp. 49–61.

The Conference Board. "Measuring Prices in a Dynamic Economy: Re-examining the CPI." New York: The Conference Board, 1999.

Dalton, Kenneth V., John S. Greenlees, and Kenneth J. Stewart. “Incorporating a geometric mean formula into the CPI.” Monthly Labor Review, October 1998, pp. 3–7.

Diewert, W. E., and A. O. Nakamura, eds. Essays in index number theory, vol. 1. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1993.

Final report of the advisory commission to study the Consumer Price Index. U.S. Senate, Committee on Finance, 104th Cong., 2d sess., 1996.3

Fixler, Dennis, Charles Fortuna, John Greenlees, and Walter Lane. “The use of hedonic regressions to handle quality change: the experience of the U.S. CPI.” Paper presented at the Fifth Meeting of the International Working Group on Price Indices, Reykjavik, Iceland, August, 26,1999.

Gillingham, Robert F. "A conceptual framework for the Consumer Price Index.” Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, Business and Economics Section. Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association, 1974, pp. 46–52.

Gillingham, Robert F. "Measuring the cost of shelter for homeowners: theoretical and empirical considerations.” The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 65, no. 2, May 1983, pp. 254–265.

Greenlees, John S., and Robert B. McClelland. "Addressing misconceptions about the Consumer Price Index.” Monthly Labor Review, August 2008, pp.3–17.

Hulten, Charles R. “Quality Change in the CPI,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review, May 2001, pp. 87–111.

Johnson, David S, Stephen B. Reed and Kenneth J. Stewart. "Price Measurement in the United States: A decade after the Boskin Report” Monthly Labor Review, May 2006 pp. 10-19.

Klick, Joshua. “Improving initial estimates of the Chained Consumer Price Index.” Monthly Labor Review, February 2016.

Konny, Crystal G., Brendan K. Williams, and David M. Friedman. “Big Data in the U.S. Consumer Price Index: Experiences & Plans.” Paper presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research conference, “Big Data for 21⁠st Century Economic Statistics,” Washington, D.C., March 15-16, 2019.

Liegey, Paul. “Hedonic quality adjustments in the U.S. CPI: a statistical agency perspective.”  Paper presented at Center for European Economic Research Conference, “Price indices and the measurement of quality change," University of Mannheim, Germany, April 25–26, 2002.

Moulton, Brent R. “Basic components of the CPI: estimation of price changes.” Monthly Labor Review, December 1993, pp. 13–24.

Moulton, Brent R., and Karin E. Moses. “Addressing the quality exchange issue in the Consumer Price Index.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1997.

Paben, Steven P., William H. Johnson, and John F. Schilp. “The 2018 revision of the Consumer Price Index geographic sample.” Monthly Labor Review, October 2016.

Pollak, Robert A. The theory of the cost-of-living index. Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Ptacek, Frank. "Updating the rent sample for the CPI Housing Survey." Monthly Labor Review, August 2013.

Reed, Stephen. "One hundred years of price change: the Consumer Price Index and the American inflation experience." Monthly Labor Review, April 2014. 

Reed, Stephen, and Stewart, Kenneth J. "Why does BLS provide both the CPI-W and CPI-U?." Beyond the Numbers, February 2014. 

Rippy, Darren. "The first hundred years of the Consumer Price Index: a methodological and political history." Monthly Labor Review, April 2014. 

Charles L. Schultze, and Christopher Mackie, eds. At What Price? Conceptualizing and measuring cost-of-living and price indexes. National Research Council Panel on Conceptual, Measurement, and Other Statistical Issues in Developing Cost-of-Living Indexes, Committee on National Statistics, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington: National Academies Press, 2002.

Shoemaker, Owen J., and William H. Johnson. “Estimation of variance components for the U.S. Consumer Price Index.” Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, Government Statistics and Social Statistics sections. Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association, 1999, pp. 298–303.

Stigler, George, ed. "The price statistics of the federal government.” In Report to the Office of Statistical Standards, Bureau of the Budget. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1961.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Measurement Issues in the Consumer Price Index,” Statistical Journal of the United Nations ECE, 15 (1998), pp.1–36.

Williams, Eilliot. "The effects of rounding on the Consumer Price Index." Monthly Labor Review, October 2006, pp. 80-89.

Williams, Janet L., Eugene F. Brown, and Gary R. Zion. “The challenge of redesigning the Consumer Price Index area sample.” Proceedings of the American Statistical Association, Survey Research Methods Section. Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association, 2003, pp. 200–205.

Appendix 1. CPI Geographic sample, 2018

Appendix 2. Content of CPI entry level items

Appendix 3. Consumer Expenditure sample rotation categories

Appendix 4. Non-Consumer Expenditure sample rotation categories

Appendix 5. Consumer Expenditure UCC to CPI ELI concordance

Appendix 6. Items for which average price data is published

Appendix 7. CPI items by publication level

Have more questions? For ways to contact us see www.bls.gov/cpi/contact.htm

Last Modified Date: February 21, 2023