An independent media intelligence project · Grabien News
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 fixed 1980 household basket — the goods and services families actually buy, held at their 1980 spending shares — priced with real retail data instead of CPI's methodology. The headline inflation rate Reality Index measures vs. the one the government reports.
$100 of 1980 goods → $475 today (vs $407 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.
Housing · The largest gap · See all housing →
Health care & Education · See all health care →
Taxes · The counterintuitive finding
Food at home · 13 retail items · See all food →
Energy · See all energy & utilities →
02 · Dashboard
Methodology documents, basket specifications, the original headline composite prototype, and supporting reference materials.
Methodology
Composite views