consumer price index (CPI)

consumer price index (CPI) extract from Britannica Online.

Measure of living costs based on changes in retail prices. Consumer price indexes are widely used to measure changes in the cost of maintaining a given standard of living. The goods and services commonly purchased by the population covered are priced periodically, and their prices are combined in proportion to their relative importance. This set of prices is compared with the initial set of prices collected in the base year to determine the percentage increase or decrease. The population covered may be restricted to wage and salary earners or to city dwellers, and special indexes may be used for special population groups (e.g., retirees). Such indexes do not take into account shifts over time in what the population buys; when modified to take subjective preferences into account, they are called constant-utility indexes. Consumer price indexes are available for more than 100 countries.

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