DECEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Sep Qtr 2018 to Dec Qtr 2018	Dec Qtr 2017 to Dec Qtr 2018
Weighted average of eight capital cities, All groups		% change	% change
Selected Living Cost Indexes (LCIs) - Household type:
	Pensioner and Beneficiary LCI (PBLCI)	0.7	2.1
	Employee LCI	0.6	1.9
	Age pensioner LCI	0.4	2.0
	Other Government Transfer Recipient LCI	0.9	2.1
	Self-funded Retiree LCI	0.5	2.2
Consumer Price Index (CPI)		0.5	1.8

Percentage change for Household type

DECEMBER KEY POINTS


NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
March 2019	1 May 2019
June 2019	7 August 2019
September 2019	6 November 2019
December 2019	5 February 2020

TIME SERIES DATA

Longer time series of statistics presented in this product are available from the Downloads tab for this product on the ABS website. They are available as Time Series Workbooks:

• TABLE 1. All Groups, Index Numbers and Percentage Changes, by Household Type
• TABLE 2. Commodity Groups, Index Numbers, Percentage Changes and Points Contributions, by Household Type
• TABLE 3. Gross Insurance, Mortgage Interest and Consumer Credit, Index Numbers and Percentage Changes, by Household Type

CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

This issue includes the introduction of updated weighting patterns using 2016-17 Household Final Consumption Expenditure data available from the Australian System of National Accounts (cat. no. 5401.0). For more details on these changes and the updated weighting patterns, refer to Information paper: Introduction of the Consumer Price Index Weight Update, 2018 (cat. no. 6470.0.55.002).


ROUNDING

Any discrepancies between totals and sums of components in this publication are due to rounding.


PRIVACY

The ABS Privacy Policy outlines how the ABS will handle any personal information that you provide to the ABS.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070.


SUMMARY COMMENTARY


THE LIVING COST INDEXES

The Living Cost Indexes (LCI) have been designed to answer the question:

'By how much would after tax money incomes need to change to allow households to purchase the same quantity of consumer goods and services that they purchased in the base period?'

In the December quarter 2018, the living costs of pensioner and beneficiary households (PBLCI) rose 0.7%. Over the same period, the living costs of other government transfer recipient households rose 0.9%, employee households rose 0.6%, self-funded retiree households rose 0.5% and age pensioner households rose 0.4%. For more information about the December quarter 2018 results see Main Contributors to Change.

These differences arise for a number of reasons. The inclusion of mortgage interest and consumer credit charges and the different treatments of housing and insurance costs in the LCIs result in variations between the LCIs and the CPI series. The expenditure patterns of those households measured by the LCIs differ from those of the overall household sector in scope of the CPI; these also contribute to differences in the percentage changes.

For a discussion of the relationship between the LCIs and CPI, see the Explanatory Notes.