The Cost of Living

23/04/2008 by admin.

Figures on food price inflation publshed today demonstrate forcibly how real inflation is far ahead of ‘official’ inflation. Rather than base RPI on patterns of average expenditure wouldn’t it be better to publish changes in individual households’ monthly expenditure. Households used in this exercise would be chosen at random from bands of household income and properly-structured qualitative interviews would be most revealing in showing how people react to ‘their’ inflation versus average inflation. I know this is a mixed-up idea at present but there is a germ of possibility here and it would be a bit more representative than ‘vox pop’ interviews by the media of the type we get around Budget time. The same raw data would, I think, provide the sampling frame.

It might provide information to Cabinet ministers, MPs and other fat cats on how the other half lives.

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