Bring your friends, family, and arguments over here, dudes. Keep it FRiendly!
The BLS has attempted to defend against all the Shadow Stats arguments in the linked .pdf. Be sure in your posts that you can overcome their defenses if you wish to defend Shadow Stats.
| Chronology of changes in the Consumer Price Index Began publication of separate indexes for 32 cities (1919) Collected prices in central cities periodically. • Developed weights from a study that BLS conducted in 1917-19 of family expenditures in 92 industrial centers Reflected the relative importance of goods and services purchased by consumers. • Collected prices for major groups: Food, clothing, rent, fuels, house furnishings, and miscellaneous • Limited pricing to items selected in advance to represent their categories • Began regular publication of a national index, the U.S. city average (1921): Based index on an unweighted average of the city indexes. Estimated U.S. city average back to 1913, using food prices only. The 1940 CPI revision: the first comprehensive revision • Used weights based on 1934-36 study of consumer expenditures • Collected prices in the 34 largest cities • Implemented a weighted average of cities for the U.S. city average CPI Improvements made between the 1940 and 1953 revisions • During World War II: Discontinued the pricing of unavailable items, such as new cars and household appliances Increased the weight of other items, including automobile repair and public transportation • In 1951: Adjusted weights in seven cities using 1947 and 1949 survey of consumer expenditures Adjusted weights for the 1950 census Adjusted rent index to remove “new unit bias” caused by rent control Added new items to the list of covered items, including frozen foods and televisions The 1953 CPI revision: the second comprehensive revision • Used weights from a 1950 expenditure survey conducted in central cities and attached urbanized areas • Refined the target population to include urban wage earner and clerical worker families • Added a sample of medium and small cities • Updated the list of items that the index covered, adding restaurant meals • Added new sources of price data • Improved pricing and calculation methods The 1964 CPI revision: the third comprehensive revision • Based weights on 1960-61 expenditure patterns in metropolitan areas • Added single-person households to target population: urban wage earner and clerical worker households • Extended pricing to the suburbs of sampled metropolitan areas • Updated the sample of cities, goods and services, and retail stores and service establishments Improvements made between the 1964 and 1978 revisions • Made quality adjustments for new vehicles at model changeover • Improved treatment of seasonal items The 1978 CPI revision: the fourth comprehensive revision • Added a new Consumer Price Index: the CPI for All Urban Consumers, or the CPI-U • Renamed the older CPI as the CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or the CPI-W • Used weights from a 1972-73 survey of consumer expenditures and the 1970 census • Expanded the sample to 85 areas • Increased minimum pricing frequency from quarterly to bimonthly • Implemented monthly pricing in the five largest areas • Introduced probability sampling methods at all stages of CPI sampling: Used probability selection methods to select the CPI sample items within stores Eliminated the list of eligible items as virtually all consumer items became eligible for pricing • Introduced checklists that define each category of spending • Developed estimates of the CPI’s sampling error and optimal sample allocation to minimize that error Improvements made between the 1978 and 1987 revisions • Began outlet and item sample rotation (1981): Began systematic replacement of outlets and their item samples between major revisions Implemented new Point-of-Purchase Survey (POPS) Selected retail outlets with probability proportional to consumer spending therein Eliminated reliance on outdated secondary-source sampling frames Began rotating outlet and item samples every 5 years Began rotating one-fifth of the CPI pricing areas each year • Introduced rental equivalence concept (January 1983 for the CPI-U; January 1985 for the CPI-W): Introduced the flow-of-services method, which removes the investment component from homeowner indexes Discontinued the asset-price approach, which treated the purchase of a home as a consumer good The 1987 CPI revision: the fifth comprehensive revision • Used weights from the 1982-84 Consumer Expenditure Survey and the 1980 census • Updated samples of items, outlets, and areas • Redesigned the CPI housing survey • Improved sampling, data collection, data processing, and statistical estimation methods • Initiated more efficient sample design and sample allocation • Introduced techniques to make CPI production and calculation more efficient Improvements made between the 1987 and 1998 revisions • Improved the housing estimator to account for the aging of the sample housing units • Improved the handling of new models of vehicles and other goods • Implemented new sample procedures to prevent overweighting items whose prices are likely to rise • Improved seasonal adjustment methods • Initiated a single hospital services item stratum with a treatment-oriented item definition: Discontinued pricing of the inputs to the index for hospital services The 1998 CPI revision: the sixth comprehensive revision • Weights from the 1993-95 Consumer Expenditure Survey and the 1990 census • Updated geographic and housing samples • Extensively revised item classification system • Implemented new housing index estimation system • Used computer-assisted data collection • Added the Telephone Point-of-Purchase Survey (TPOPS): Allows rotation of outlet and item samples by item category and geographic area, rather than by area alone • Initiated a new housing survey based on the 1990 census (January 1999): Estimated price change for owners’ equivalent rent directly from rents • Began using a geometric mean formula for most basic indexes (January 1999): Mitigates lower-level substitution bias Reflects shifts in consumer spending within item categories as relative prices change • Published the CPI-U Research Series Featured backcastings of all CPI method changes to 1978 Provided revision in cases of methodology change Improvements since the 1998 revision Extended the use of hedonic regression to estimate the value of items changing in quality Directed replacement of sample items in the personal computer and other categories, to keep samples current Implemented 4-year outlet rotation to replace the 5-year scheme Began within-outlet item rotation for prescription drugs and other item categories Implemented biennial weight updates (January 2002): Separated weight updates from major revisions to keep weights as current as possible (Weights used in 2002-2003 were based on the 1999-2000 Consumer Expenditure Survey; weights used in 2004-05 were based on the 2001-02 Consumer Expenditure Survey; weights used in 2006-07 were based on the 2003-04 Consumer Expenditure Survey.) Increased sample size of the Consumer Expenditure Survey, so that CPI weights can be based on just 2 years of data from expenditure surveys 2 and 3 years previous Added the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) (August 2002): Uses more advanced “superlative” index formula (the Tornqvist formula) Corrects upper-level substitution bias Began computer-assisted data collection for the Commodities and Services Survey (2002–2003) Expanded collection of price data to all business days of the month Began publishing indexes to three decimal places (Jan. 2007)
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