Personal consumption expenditures price index

The PCE price index (PCEPI), also referred to as the PCE deflator, PCE price deflator, or the Implicit Price Deflator for Personal Consumption Expenditures (IPD for PCE) by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and as the Chain-type Price Index for Personal Consumption Expenditures (CTPIPCE) by the

Federal Open Market Committee The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is a committee within the Federal Reserve System (the Fed) that is charged under United States law with overseeing the nation's open market operations (e.g., the Fed's buying and selling of United Stat ...

(FOMC), is a United States-wide indicator of the average increase in prices for all domestic personal consumption. It is benchmarked to a base of 2012 = 100. Using a variety of data including U.S. Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index prices, it is derived from the largest component of the GDP in the BEA's

National Income and Product Accounts The national income and product accounts (NIPA) are part of the national accounts of the United States. They are produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce. They are one of the main sources of data on general econ ...

, personal consumption expenditures. The personal consumption expenditure (PCE) measure is the component statistic for consumption in

gross domestic product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performanc ...

(GDP) collected by the United States

Bureau of Economic Analysis The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the United States Department of Commerce is a U.S. government agency that provides official macroeconomic and industry statistics, most notably reports about the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United ...

(BEA). It consists of the actual and imputed expenditures of

household A household consists of one or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is im ...

s and includes data pertaining to durable and non-durable

goods In economics, goods are anything that is good, usually in the sense that it provides welfare or utility to someone. Alan V. Deardorff, 2006. ''Terms Of Trade: Glossary of International Economics'', World Scientific. Online version: Deardorffs ...

and services. Essentially, it is a measure of goods and services targeted towards individuals and consumed by individuals. The less volatile measure of the PCE price index is the core PCE (CPCE) price index, which excludes the more volatile and seasonal food and energy prices (e.g., oil,

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

, and

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

). In comparison to the headline

United States Consumer Price Index The United States Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a family of various consumer price indices published monthly by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The most commonly used indices are the CPI-U and the CPI-W, though many alterna ...

(CPI), which uses one set of expenditure weights for several years, this index uses a Fisher Price Index, which uses expenditure data from only the current period and the preceding period. Also, the PCEPI uses a chained index which compares one quarter's price to the previous quarter's instead of using a fixed base. This price index method assumes that the consumer has made allowances for changes in relative prices. That is to say, they have substituted from goods whose prices are rising to goods whose prices are stable or falling. PCE has been tracked since January 1959. Through July 2018, inflation measured by PCE has averaged 3.3%, while it has averaged 3.8% using CPI. This may be due to the failure of CPI to take into account the

substitution effect In economics and particularly in consumer choice theory, the substitution effect is one component of the effect of a change in the price of a good upon the amount of that good demanded by a consumer, the other being the income effect. When a ...

. Alternatively, an unpublished report on this difference by the

Bureau of Labor Statistics The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is a unit of the United States Department of Labor. It is the principal fact-finding agency for the government of the United States, U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics, labor economics and ...

suggests that most of it is from different ways of calculating hospital expenses and airfares. PCE data is published monthly by the

(BEA) as part of the

(NIPA).

Federal Reserve

In its " Monetary Policy Report to the Congress" (" Humphrey–Hawkins Report") from February 17, 2000 the FOMC said it was changing its primary measure of inflation from the

consumer price index A consumer price index (CPI) is a statistical estimate of the level of prices of goods and services bought for consumption purposes by households. It is calculated as the weighted average price of a market basket of Goods, consumer goods and ...

to the "chain-type price index for personal consumption expenditures".

Comparison to CPI

The differences between the two indexes can be grouped into four categories: formula effect, weight effect, scope effect, and "other effects". Inflation data

*The formula effect accounts for the different formulas used to calculate the two indexes. The PCE price index is based on the Fisher-Ideal formula, while the CPI is based on a modified Laspeyres formula. *The weight effect accounts for the relative importance of the underlying commodities reflected in the construction of the two indexes. *The scope effect accounts for conceptual differences between the two indexes. PCE measures spending by and on behalf of the personal sector, which includes both households and nonprofit institutions serving households; the CPI measures out-of-pocket spending by households. The "net" scope effect adjusts for CPI items out-of-scope of the PCE price index less items in the PCE price index that are out-of-scope of the CPI. *"Other effects" include seasonal adjustment differences, price differences, and residual differences. - See more at: https://www.bea.gov/help/faq/555 Source: The above chart is illustrative but may not reflect current values. The comparisons in the table above will vary over time as the relative weights of the components of the indexes change. The CPI base price and weightings are adjusted every two years. The above table illustrates two commonly discussed important differences between the PCE deflator and CPI-U. The first major difference is the relative importance of housing, which is due in part to the difference in scope mentioned above. CPI contains a large component of owner-equivalent rent, which by definition is an imputed value and not a real direct expenditure. The second major difference in weight is healthcare. This again stems from the definition of the index and the surveys used. CPI measures only the out-of-pocket healthcare costs of households, while PCE includes healthcare purchased on behalf of households by third parties, including employer-provided health insurance. In the United States, employer health insurance is a large component and accounts for much of the difference in weights. Another notable difference is that prices and weightings of the CPI are based on household surveys, while those of the PCE are based on business surveys. One reason for the difference in formulas is that not all the data needed for the Fisher-Ideal formula is available monthly even though it is considered superior. CPI is a practical alternative used to give a quicker read on prices in the previous month. PCE is typically revised three times in each of the months following the end of a quarter, and then the entire NIPA tables are re-based annually and every five years. Despite all these conceptual and methodological differences, the two indexes track fairly closely when averaged over several years.

References

External links

Data

Briefing.com: Personal Income and Spending

(the core CPI as a comparison)

(click on "Personal Income and Outlays", then skip to Tables 9 and 11 near the bottom.)
St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED2 PCE data index

Articles