Consumer price index, 1913-1983

The Consumer Price Index measures, over time, the prices of goods and services in major expenditure categories typically purchased by urban consumers. The expenditure categories include food, housing, apparel, transportation, health, and recreation. The Index essentially measures the purchasing power of consumers' dollars by comparing a package of sample goods at one point in time with that package at an earlier reference date. The C.P.I. includes indexes for two populations: urban wage earners and clerical workers, and all urban consumers. The urban wage earners and clerical workers index represents the buying habits of about 40 percent of the non-institutionalized, civilian population. The all-urban consumers index includes self-employed, professional, managerial, and technical workers, short-term workers, the unemployed, retirees, and others not in the labor force. Thus, the all-urban consumers index contains about 80 percent of the population. This file contains the average indexes for both populations for 357 consumer items and groups of items. The indexes provide data for 28 urban places for 64 items, regional indexes provide data for 4 regions for about 100 items, and 5 city-size indexes provide data for 89 items and groups per class.