The Reality Index
The headline finding. A basket of goods and services that cost $100 in 1980 costs $522 per the Reality Index in 2025, versus $391 per the official CPI. The Reality Index ran 33.6% faster than CPI over 45 years.
Two inflation crises. Extending the data back to 1970 captures the previous inflation crisis (peak: 1979, Reality Index +16.1% year-over-year; CPI +11.3%) alongside the current one (peak so far: 2022, Reality Index +9.8%; CPI +8.0%). The 1970s spike was the sharper of the two on both measures. Over the full 55-year window, Reality Index ran 56% faster than CPI.
Apples to apples, not weights to weights.Reality Index holds a fixed 2000 household basket constant across every year (a Laspeyres index), so it measures what the same basket of 1980 middle-class life costs over time. The only difference between our index and theirs is the prices feeding the buckets. Where independent retail and consumer data exists — Kaiser Family Foundation for family health insurance premiums, NCES for college tuition, FHFAfor home prices, AAA for vehicle costs, EIAfor gasoline, BLS Average Price Data for retail food and electricity — we use it.Where it doesn’t exist (dining out, communications, recreation), we fall back to the BLS CPI subindexes. The methodological principle: independent data wherever it exists, BLS subindex chaining only where it doesn’t.
