Producer price indices volume 2002, Supplement 2

Socio-economic coverage
In almost all OECD Member countries the CPI is designed to be relevant to as many households
as possible, and not to a specific socio-economic group. However, in some countries extremely
wealthy households are excluded as their expenditure data are unreliable
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and because it may be too
costly to collect prices for some of the consumer goods and services purchased exclusively by the
wealthy. For example, the United Kingdom excludes the top 4% of households by income and, at the
other end of the scale, households mainly dependent on state pensions (with the net result that roughly
15% of households and 15% of expenditure is excluded). Japan and Korea exclude households mainly
engaged in agriculture, forestry and fishing, and all one-person households.
For CPI purposes, the definition of a household is essentially the same as in the System of
National Accounts 1993 (SNA), which includes both private households, including those consisting of
only one person, and institutional households such as religious orders, residential hospitals, prisons,
etc.
27
. For many OECD Member countries, however, the institutional population and those living in
non-private households are excluded from the scope of the CPI, often due to difficulty obtaining data
on their consumption patterns. In these countries the indices are restricted to the private household
population or a subset of the private household population. On the other hand, the HICP coverage of
households includes institutional households.
Table 5: Consumer prices: Socio-economic coverage
Inclusions
Specific
inclusions/exclusions
Non-private
households/Institutional
population
Canada
Families
and
individuals
living in private households.
Excludes persons living on Indian
reserves,
officials
representing
foreign countries and residents of
the
Yukon
and
Northwest
Territories
outside
Whitehorse
and Yellowknife.
Excludes
persons
living
in
collective households.
Mexico
All types of households in
cities of more than 20 000
inhabitants.
Excludes those households
in
areas
of
less
than
20 000
inhabitants.
..
United States
Includes wage earners and
clerical workers, professional,
managerial,
and
technical
workers, short-term workers,
self-employed,
unemployed,
retirees, and others not in the
labour force.
Excludes about 13% of total
population: those living in urban
areas
of
less
than
2 500
inhabitants, farm families.
Excludes military personnel and
those living in prisons and mental
hospitals.
Australia
All
metropolitan
private
households
including
the
self-employed,
old
age
pensioners, and social welfare
beneficiaries.
Target
population is about 64% of
total population.
Excludes
about
36%
of
the
population of Australia living
outside of the metropolitan areas.
..
26
Household budget survey response rates are often lower for these households.
27
Institutional households do not include convalescent homes, schools and colleges, the military, etc. whose members are treated as
belonging to their family households. For a more comprehensive description of households see System of National Accounts 1993 – Eurostat,
IMF, OECD, UN, World Bank (1993), Paragraphs 4.132-4.138.

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MEI Methodological Analysis - Supplement 2
© 2002
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Table 5: Consumer prices: Socio-economic coverage (continued)