An independent media intelligence project · Grabien Inc.
The Consumer Price Index gets the cheap stuff right and the expensive stuff wrong. The Reality Index measures the gap between what the government reports and what families actually pay.
01
A weighted basket of the goods and services families actually buy, using BLS Consumer Expenditure weights with real retail prices instead of CPI's methodology. The headline inflation rate Reality Index measures vs. the one the government reports.
$100 of 1980 goods → $516 today (vs $391 per CPI)
See the headline rate →02
The total annual cost of a fixed 1980 middle-class lifestyle — four-bedroom home, three children, two cars, employer health coverage — priced every year from 1980 to 2025 against median household income.
Dream cost as % of median income, 2025
See the index →03
Every chart, every methodology document, every individual item — organized by category. The full project surface.
Live charts & methodology documents
Browse everything →01 · Reality Index
Each item below shows what consumers actually paid at retail, the BLS CPI subindex for the same category, and the official CPI All Items rate — across the longest available history.
Health care · The structural divergence · See all health care →
Food at home · 13 retail items · See all food →
Energy · Where supply chains held · See all energy & utilities →
Single-item benchmarks
02 · Dashboard
Methodology documents, basket specifications, the original headline composite prototype, and supporting reference materials.
Methodology
Composite views