MARCH KEY FIGURES

		Dec Qtr 2017 to Mar Qtr 2018	Mar Qtr 2017 to Mar 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	2.3
	Employee LCI	0.5	2.0
	Age pensioner LCI	0.8	2.1
	Other Government Transfer Recipient LCI	0.7	2.4
	Self-funded Retiree LCI	0.4	1.8
Consumer Price Index (CPI)		0.4	1.9

Percentage change for Household type In the March quarter 2018, the annual living costs of pensioner and beneficiary households (PBLCI) rose 2.3%, employee households rose 2.0% and self funded retiree households rose 1.8%.

MARCH KEY POINTS


NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
June quarter 2018	1 August 2018
September quarter 2018	7 November 2018
December quarter 2018	6 February 2019
March quarter 2019	1 May 2019

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 2018, the living costs of age pensioner households rose 0.8%. Over the same period, pensioner and beneficiary households (PBLCI) rose 0.7% and other government recipient households rose 0.7%. The living costs of employee households rose 0.5% and self funded retiree households rose 0.4%. For more information about the March 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.