U.S. Inflation by Generation · All Consumers (Palanor Basket) · Cumulative Since January 2019

## What this measures

The cumulative change in consumer prices since January 2019 for all consumer units in the United States, priced with that group's own spending basket. A Palanor calculation from public BLS data, monthly.

## Why it matters

It is the yardstick for the age-group series: the same method run on every household, so each generation's gap is measured against a like-for-like average rather than against the official CPI, whose basket and weighting differ in detail.

## How to read it

Percent rise in prices since January 2019. Compare it with the official CPI-U (fred_cpi) to see how closely the method reproduces the headline, and read the age-group series against it (inflation.by_age.<group>.gap_vs_all).

## How it is built

Prices: 31 CPI-U component indexes (U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted) from the BLS public API. Weights: each age group's average annual spending by item from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys, Table 1300 (age of reference person). For index year Y the weights are the group's spending in year Y minus 2, the lag the CPI itself uses, price-updated to December of Y minus 1; months are linked within the year and chained across years, and the series is the percent change from January 2019. Housing follows the CPI: owners are priced by owners' equivalent rent and weighted by the survey's estimated rental value of owned homes, so mortgage interest, property taxes and owners' repair and insurance outlays are left out. Health insurance spending is priced by medical care services, the way the CPI allocates premiums to the care they pay for. Vehicle finance charges, cash contributions, and personal insurance and pensions are outside the CPI's scope and are left out. Where BLS suppressed a cell in the 2022 or 2023 table (sampling error of 25% or more, mostly for the under-25 group), it is filled with the group's share of its spending on that item in the nearest published years. October 2025 has no reading: BLS did not collect prices that month.

Ages map to generations by birth year, using Pew Research Center's definitions (Gen Z 1997 to 2012, Millennials 1981 to 1996, Gen X 1965 to 1980, Baby Boomers 1946 to 1964, Silent Generation 1928 to 1945), as of 2024, the latest Consumer Expenditure year in the weights: under 25 = born 2000 or later (Gen Z); 25 to 34 = born 1990 to 1999 (younger Millennials and the oldest of Gen Z); 35 to 44 = born 1980 to 1989 (older Millennials); 45 to 54 = born 1970 to 1979 (Gen X); 55 to 64 = born 1960 to 1969 (the youngest Baby Boomers and the oldest of Gen X); 65 and over = born 1959 or earlier (Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation). The bands are fixed ages, not fixed cohorts: each year's weights describe whoever was that age in the survey year, and the "reference person" is the household member who owns or rents the home.

## What it does not say

It prices a fixed basket for the group as a whole, not any one household, and it does not reflect substitution within a year. It is not an official BLS measure; BLS publishes an experimental CPI for Americans 62 and older (CPI-E) on a different basis. Run the same way for all consumers, the method gave a cumulative rise of 34.9% from January 2019 to September 2026, against 33.9% for the official headline CPI-U (not seasonally adjusted): about one percentage point above, or a little over a tenth of a point a year. The difference comes from pricing 31 components instead of the CPI's roughly 240 item strata, from Consumer Expenditure spending shares that differ from the CPI's relative importance (used cars weigh more, for example), and from the weighting lag. Because every age group is priced the same way, most of that difference cancels out of the gaps between groups.

## Source

Palanor calculation. Prices: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, component indexes. Weights: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Surveys, Table 1300 (age of reference person), 2017 to 2024. Both public domain. Recomputed each month after the CPI release.