CPI: Consumer Price Index (1913-Present)

The Consumer Price Index measures the average change in prices paid by US urban consumers for a market basket of goods and services. This dataset contains 28 categories with historical data from 1913 to present. You can find one table with the following columns below:

consumer_price_index

- cpi_item
- cpi_date
- cyear
- cmonth
- cpi_index

CPI Items include:

- All
- All minus food and energy
- Apparel
- Cereal and Bakery
- Dairy Related
- Education
- Electricity
- Energy
- Food and Beverage
- Food At Home
- Food Away From Home
- Full Service Meals and Snacks
- Gasoline
- Hospital Services
- Housing
- Medical Care
- New Vehicles
- Meat, Poultry, Fish and Eggs
- Non Alcoholic Beverage Materials
- Other Food at Home
- Prescription Drugs
- Transportation
- Utility Gas
- Communications
- Fruit and Vegetables
- Limited Service Meals and Snacks
- Recreation
- Used Vehicles

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Uses:

- As an economic indicator. As the most widely used measure of inflation, the CPI is an indicator of the effectiveness of government policy. In addition, business executives, labor leaders and other private citizens use the index as a guide in making economic decisions.
- As a deflator of other economic series. The CPI and its components are used to adjust other economic series for price change and to translate these series into inflation-free dollars.
- As a means for adjusting dollar values. The CPI is often used to adjust consumers' income payments (for example, Social Security), to adjust income eligibility levels for government assistance, and to automatically provide cost-of-living wage adjustments to millions of American workers. The index affects the income of more than 90 million people because of statutory action: over 65 million Social Security beneficiaries and over 38 million Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients (formerly food stamps), among other programs.