Owners’equivalentrentandtheConsumerPriceIndex30.pdfVIP

U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS MAY 2013 • VOLUME 2 / NUMBER 14 P R I C E S A N D S P E N D I N G Owners’ equivalent rent and the Consumer Price Index: 30 years and counting Authors: Frank Ptacek and Darren A. Rippy Related articles he objective of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is to measure the change in expenditures required to More BLS articles and information related to Tmaintain a given standard of living. For expenditures on housing and the Consumer Price Index are houses, this leads to a measurement objective that focuses on the available online at the following links: shelter services provided by a house over a period of time. A house y “How the CPI measures price change of is a capital asset that provides a flow of services over a substantial Owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence period of time, not a one-time consumption item. (OER) and Rent of primary residence (Rent),” /cpi/cpifacnewrent.pdf The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) explored two major y BLS Handbook of Methods - Chapter approaches to determine how to estimate the cost of shelter 17. The Consumer Price Index, services for owner-occupied dwellings. The first approach attempts /opub/hom/homch17.htm to estimate the flow of shelter services for an owned dwelling from items related to living in it. This approach is called “user cost” and includes items such as real estate taxe