NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
March 2010	17 May 2010
June 2010	16 August 2010
September 2010	15 November 2010
December 2010	14 February 2011

ROUNDING

Any discrepancies between totals and sums of components in this publication are due to rounding.


CPI DATA RE-REFERENCED TO JUNE QUARTER 1998 = 100.0

For ease of comparison, the index reference period for the CPI data used throughout this publication has been re-referenced to June quarter 1998 = 100.0. All index numbers and percentage changes shown are calculated on this basis. This may lead to some minor differences from the figures published in Consumer Price Index, Australia (cat. no. 6401.0).


INQUIRIES

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SUMMARY COMMENTARY


THE ANALYTICAL LIVING COST INDEX

The Analytical Living Cost Indexes (ALCI) for Selected Australian Household Types have been designed to answer the question:

'By how much would after tax money incomes need to change to allow households to purchase the same quantity of consumer goods and services that they purchased in the base period?'

In the December quarter 2009, changes in living costs ranged from a low of 0.6% (age pensioner households, other government transfer recipient households and self funded retiree households) to a high of 0.7% (employee households). The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by 0.5% over the same period.

Since the series began in June quarter 1998, changes in living costs for each household type have historically tracked closely to the CPI. The living costs of age pensioner households showed the highest increase of 43.9% followed by other government transfer recipient households which increased 43.8%, slightly higher than the 40.1% increase in the CPI. Self-funded retiree households have experienced an increase of 39.9%. The living costs of employee households increased by 41.6%.

These differences have come about for a number of reasons. The inclusion of mortgage interest and consumer credit charges in the analytical living cost indexes has a significant impact for employee and other government transfer recipient households. The inclusion of mortgage interest and consumer credit charges and the different treatments of housing and insurance in the ALCIs result in variations between the ALCIs and the CPI series. The expenditure patterns of those households measured by the ALCIs differ from those of the overall household sector covered by the CPI. This also contributes to differences in the percentage changes.

For a discussion of the relationship between the ALCIs and CPI, see the Explanatory Notes.