"A recent literature has advanced the use of Engel curves to estimate overall CPI bias. In this paper, I show that the … methodology is sensitive to the modeling of household demography. Existing estimates of CPI bias do not account for the changing … effect of household size on budget shares, and this can lead to omitted variable bias. Since the effect of household size on …

This paper provides the first estimates of overall CPI bias prior to the 1970s and new estimates of bias since the 1970 …s. It finds that annual CPI bias was -0.1 percent between 1888 and 1919 and rose to 0.7 percent between 1919 and 1935 …. Annual CPI bias was 0.4 percent in the 1960s and then rose to 2.7 percent between 1972 and 1982 before falling to 0.6 percent …