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 weighted basket of the goods and services families actually buy, holding a fixed 2000 basket constant (a Laspeyres index) and pricing it with real retail and transaction prices instead of CPI's methodology. The headline inflation rate Reality Index measures vs. the one the government reports.
$100 of 1980 goods → $522 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 what one median full-time worker earns.
Dream cost as % of one full-time worker’s earnings, 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 →New · The 1950s contrast
In 1950 a single manufacturing paycheck covered 99.7% of what a household actually spent on housing, food, health care, transport and schooling. Today the same basket takes 138.1% — and health care has gone from 5.3% of it to 30.8%.
See the 1950s contrast →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