cost-of-living index
1
3.5
- noun
- /ˈkɔst əv ˈlɪvɪŋ ˈɪndɛks/
- Specialized
:
índice de costo de vida
- 'Cost of living index or inflation.'
Examples
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The 1972 amendments to the Social Security Act, which raised benefits and tied future increases to the cost-of-living index, enhanced the economic well-being of older people relative to other population groups.
Academic text (1990) -
A cost-of-living index that measured the gains from the improved matching of products and product varieties to consumers' preferences and circumstances might show substantial gains (even beyond the e-commerce benefits discussed below).
Academic text (2016) -
Because food prices are such an important component of the cost-of-living index, the index rose by 40 percent.
Academic text (1991) -
The attack by labor unions on the cost-of-living index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the defense of the index by the statisticians.
Academic text (2004) -
Median incomes were adjusted for the city's cost of living using 1989 ACCRA cost of living indices.
Academic text (2011) -
Yglesias also indirectly references this 2005 Steve Sailer post tabulating "the monetary standard of living by state, as calculated by median income for a family of four divided by Accra's cost of living index."
Blog text (1) -
The figures for consumption, derived from studies carried out to revise the cost of living index, are more dependable than those for income, which involve inescapably uncertain corrections, notably for underreporting of incomes.
Academic text (1997) -
Missing cost-of-living indices were imputed by regressing cost of living on census measures of population size, unemployment rate, percentage of White residents, percentage of college graduates, median monthly rent, median housing value, and dummies for geographic region.
Academic text (2011) -
The cost-of-living index increased due to rising housing and transportation expenses.
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Economists use the cost-of-living index to examine changes in consumers' purchasing power over time.
Synonyms
30
4.2
A measure of how prices people pay change over time
15
3.2
A number that shows how prices of goods and services change over time
8
3.9
An official measure of how prices people pay for goods and services change over time
Surface Forms
Morphology
cost-of-living + index
The compound is compositional: 'cost of living' straightforwardly means the expenses required to live and 'index' means a numeric indicator, so a 'cost-of-living index' is directly interpretable as a measure of those expenses. This construction is cross-linguistically common and follows normal English noun-modifier composition, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would be able to infer the meaning.
Etymology
Cost-of-living index comes from the idea of adding up the costs of everyday needs like food, rent and bills and turning them into one number, the index. That number shows 'how much money people need to keep the same standard of living', so it is used to track price changes and to adjust wages or pensions.