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Simulate a personalized price index

The consumer price index is an average of the “elementary” price indices for 1,000 product families tracked monthly. The average takes account of each product family's weight in household consumption. As the consumer price index measures price changes for a set of goods and services representing consumption by all households, the weights used reflect an “average” consumption structure.

But the “average” consumer does not exist. Each household has its own consumption structure, which diverges to a greater or lesser degree from the general structure: rent absorbs a larger share of the budget of households who rent, healthcare generally takes up a greater share of old people's expenditures, and tobacco expenditures depend on the presence of smokers in the household.

The price increases that you experience personally therefore depend on what you buy: if you consume large quantities of a product whose price is rising by more than the average, your “individual inflation” will exceed average inflation.

With the price-index simulator, you can calculate a price index that takes your specific spending profile into account. To do this, you can adjust the share of your budget devoted to a dozen major items. The simulator will then compute a personalized index that you can compare with INSEE's average consumer price index.

Important note: this educational instrument allows you to modify budget shares very freely (each product's share must be less than 50% and the total equal to 100%). It therefore lets you describe situations that can be unrealistic. The results obtained are purely notional: they do not replace the various price indices published by INSEE. The consumer price index remains the official reference for adjusting maintenance payments.

To use the simulator, your browser or an external module needs to handle the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) format. For more information, see our “help” section.

Launch the simulator