MARCH KEY FIGURES

		Dec Qtr 2012 to Mar Qtr 2013	Mar Qtr 2012 to Mar Qtr 2013
Weighted average of eight capital cities, All groups		% change	% change
Selected Living Cost Indexes (LCIs) – Household type:
	Pensioner and Beneficiary LCI (PBLCI)	0.5	2.7
	Employee LCI	0.2	1.7
	Age pensioner LCI	0.4	2.8
	Other Government Transfer Recipient LCI	0.5	2.6
	Self–funded Retiree LCI	0.0	2.3
Consumer Price Index (CPI)		0.4	2.5

Percentage change for Household type – December Quarter 2012 to March Quarter 2013

MARCH KEY POINTS


NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
June 2013	31 July 2013
September 2013	30 October 2013
December 2013	29 January 2014
March 2014	30 April 2014

ROUNDING

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


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

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 March quarter 2013, changes in the living costs of pensioner and beneficiary households (PBLCI) rose 0.5%. Over the same period, the living costs of other government transfer recipient households rose 0.5%, age pensioner households rose 0.4%, employee households rose 0.2% and self–funded retiree households recorded no change. For more information about the March quarter 2013 results, see Main Contributors to Change.

These differences have come about for a number of reasons. The inclusion of mortgage interest and consumer credit charges in the living cost indexes has a significant impact on employee and other government transfer recipient households. The inclusion of mortgage interest and consumer credit charges and the different treatments of housing and insurance 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 covered by 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.