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NewsTopic · 美国CPI方法争议3 min read·2026-10-20

US Asset Manager Barry Ritholtz: Four Decades of CPI Method Changes Nearly All Lowered Reported Inflation; 2025 Suspended Collection in Several Metro Areas

Barry Ritholtz, founder of Ritholtz Wealth Management, traces the history of US CPI methodology changes from 1944 to 2025, noting that since 1983 nearly every major technical adjustment moved in the direction of lowering reported inflation, with timing aligned to fiscal or political needs. He argues that the 2025 episode—DOGE-driven staffing cuts leading BLS to suspend CPI collection in several metro areas and replace it with imputation—represents a qualitative shift from 'creatively re-measuring downwards' to 'ceasing to measure entirely.'

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2026-10-19 23:00 GMT+8

US asset manager Barry Ritholtz, in a blog post dated October 19, 2026, made an observation: since World War Two, the US government's every major methodological adjustment to inflation statistics has moved almost entirely in one direction—lowering the reported inflation number.

He traces this line from 1944 to 2025. During World War Two, the Cost-of-Living Index (COLI) understated price increases by 4 percentage points from 1941 to 1944, as goods became unavailable, wages froze, and black-market pricing took over. In 1945, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) renamed the data series the Consumer Price Index and redefined it as a fixed-basket price index.

Between 1972 and 1975, the stagflation era gave birth to the concept of core inflation. After the 1972–73 food price spike, Fed Chair Arthur Burns had Fed staff strip out food, reasoning it was 'weather, not monetary policy'; after the embargo, energy was removed. Soon after, used cars, mobile homes, and children's toys were stripped one by one until only a fraction of the basket remained. Ritholtz coined the phrase 'Inflation Ex-Inflation' in 2005 to describe this—removing inflation itself from inflation data.

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In 1983, BLS changed the housing component of CPI-U from asset price plus mortgage interest cost to owners' equivalent rent (OER). Ritholtz acknowledges this is conceptually defensible—a house is an appreciating asset while shelter is a consumer good—but he points out that the 2002–07 housing bubble did not show up in CPI because rent prices were restrained by millions of Americans stampeding into no-doc, ARM mortgage, home-ownership purchases. The 2021–23 shelter price lag similarly exposed the OER distortion.

The 1995–96 Boskin Commission is where Ritholtz's language is sharpest. He directly called its report 'pure political bullshit.' The Commission estimated CPI overstated inflation by 1.1 points a year (range 0.8–1.6); its political purpose was to reduce cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) and tax bracket creep, saving $1 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade or so. Ritholtz asks: if inflation had been properly reported (e.g., pre-Boskin), might the Federal Reserve have picked up the distortions in the backward, real estate-driven economy?

In 2000, the Fed shifted its preferred inflation gauge from CPI to PCE; in 2004 it moved further to core PCE; since 2012 the 2% target is formally anchored to PCE. Ritholtz notes this lowered the inflation number the Fed is judged against by approximately 0.5 points per year versus CPI. In 2017, the Trump tax cut legislation adopted the chained CPI (C-CPI-U) that Obama had proposed and then withdrawn, for tax bracket indexing.

Ritholtz considers the 2025 episode qualitatively different from all prior adjustments. DOGE firings and other staffing cuts led BLS to suspend CPI collection in several metro areas, replacing it with imputation. Trump fired Commissioner McEntarfer on August 1, 2025, after a bad jobs report, and the Antoni nomination that followed did not go through. Ritholtz writes: this is not creatively re-measuring inflation downwards, but ceasing to measure it entirely.

He acknowledges that changes like OER have theoretical justification, and admits he could be wrong. But his core observation is directional: every major change since 1983 moved in the same direction, and almost always timed to a fiscal or political need.

The strongest counterargument is selection bias: the Boskin Commission's substitution bias, quality adjustment, and new goods bias are standard index-theory problems, not uniquely American; the OER asset/consumer distinction has economics consensus support. Methodological adjustments that could raise inflation readings may never have been proposed or were already rejected, so the 'all downward' pattern may not be a conspiracy but the natural direction of statistical methodology evolution—because most index-theory corrections do tend to lower reported values.

Sources

  • 原始出处ritholtz.com↗
Topic

美国CPI方法争议

美国消费者价格指数（CPI）正面临前所未有的公信力危机。自1983年以来，美国劳工统计局（BLS）的一系列方法论调整——从将住房成本由实际房价改为“业主等价租金”（OER），到引入替代效应和hedonic质量调整——被批评者认为系统性地压低…

6 steps1 piecesUpdated 2026-10-20 09:50

How it got here

  1. 1983-01-01BLS将CPI中的住房部分从“用户成本”（含房价和房贷利息）改为“业主等价租金”（OER），此举被认为切断了CPI与资产价格通胀的直接联系。
  2. 1996-12-04博斯金委员会（Boskin Commission）发布报告，声称CPI每年高估通胀约1.1个百分点，推动BLS实施旨在降低报告通胀的方法论改革。
  3. 2025-04-01因预算削减和人员流失，BLS开始在内布拉斯加州林肯市和犹他州普罗沃市完全暂停CPI数据采集，并在其他72个地区平均减少15%的采样频率。

What is still unsettled

  • BLS声称暂停采集对全国CPI影响微乎其微，但独立分析显示受影响地区覆盖全美约5%的消费市场，这种区域差异是否会在长期累积成显著偏差？
  • 随着实地采集比例下降，美联储是否会正式宣布放弃CPI作为主要通胀锚定指标，转而完全依赖PCE或核心服务指数？
  • 针对BLS数据收集挑战的全面审查结果何时公布，是否会建议恢复人力投入或修改估算算法？
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