United States Customer Price Index

United States Customer Price Index Questions

Most recently, in March 2017 Britain’s statistics office introduced a new headline measure of inflation, the “consumer-prices index including owner-occupiers’ housing costs” (CPIH), which includes the specific costs of owning a home, such as mortgages and estate agents’ fees (The Economist Explains, 2017).

CPIH may be ultra-sophisticated (statistical agencies in other countries struggle to incorporate housing costs), but like all inflation measures it remains an imperfect measure of changes to Britain’s living standards.

For your initial discussion post, respond to the following prompts:

• Identify the problems of measuring cost of living mentioned in this article.
• Explain why it is a problem?
• What solutions are mentioned in this article?      
• PART B 
• Based on your discussion and readings for this week, explain what the best method to calculate the cost of living is, and what challenges still exist with it.
• https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economics.utoronto.ca%2Fgindart%2F2017-09-05%2520-%2520Why%2520it%2520is%2520so%2520difficult%2520to%2520measure%2520inflation.pdf&embedded=true&chrome=false&dov=1