Data Sources
Every figure on this site comes from one of the series below. Each is used as its publisher issues it, with no smoothing, no estimation, and no filling of gaps.
| Series | Source | Frequency | Available history | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Consumer Prices | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | January 1913 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Housing | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | January 1967 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Food and beverages | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | January 1967 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Transportation | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | March 1935 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Medical care | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | March 1935 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Recreation | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | January 1993 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Education and communication | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | January 1993 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Apparel | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | December 1914 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Other goods and services | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics | Monthly | January 1967 – August 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation required |
| Gold | World Bank Commodity Markets (Pink Sheet) | Monthly | January 1960 – August 2026 | CC BY 4.0 — commercial use permitted with attribution |
| U.S. Large-Cap Equity Composite | Robert J. Shiller, Yale University | Monthly | January 1871 – September 2026 | No stated licence; factual series published openly for decades. Used with attribution. |
| U.S. Large-Cap Equity Composite (total return) | Robert J. Shiller, Yale University | Monthly | January 1871 – June 2026 | No stated licence; factual series published openly for decades. Used with attribution. |
| Median new home sale price | U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development | Quarterly | Q1 1963 – Q2 2026 | U.S. public domain; citation requested |
| Median US household income | U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey ASEC | Annual | 1967 – 2024 | U.S. public domain; citation requested |
Notes on individual series
US Consumer Prices
CPI-U, U.S. city average, all items, not seasonally adjusted (CUUR0000SA0). NSA is used deliberately: seasonal adjustment factors are revised annually, which would silently change historical answers between data updates.
Housing
CUUR0000SAH.
Food and beverages
CUUR0000SAF.
Transportation
CUUR0000SAT.
Medical care
CUUR0000SAM.
Recreation
CUUR0000SAR. Created in the 1998 CPI revision, replacing the older Entertainment group; series begins 1993-01. Indexed to Dec 1997 = 100 rather than 1982-84 = 100, which is harmless because the engine only ever takes ratios within a single series.
Education and communication
CUUR0000SAE. Created in the 1998 CPI revision; series begins 1993-01. Indexed to Dec 1997 = 100. Together with cpi-recreation this sets the 1993 floor on the Personal Inflation Calculator.
Apparel
CUUR0000SAA.
Other goods and services
CUUR0000SAG.
Gold
Monthly average of daily London quotations, USD per troy ounce, published roughly one month in arrears. There is no live spot price in the MVP. The 2026 edition of the Pink Sheet publishes gold rounded to whole dollars (the 2025 edition carried cents); the effect is nil before 1968 when gold was fixed at $35, at worst about 1% during 1971-74, and under 0.1% from 1975 onward.
U.S. Large-Cap Equity Composite
Price only. investable is false deliberately: plan §13 forbids using a price-only series to imply investment performance. Use us-equities-total-return for that. Never labelled 'S&P 500' — that is a licensed, trademarked index and this is not it.
U.S. Large-Cap Equity Composite (total return)
Constructed by us via monthly dividend reinvestment from Shiller's price and dividend columns, indexed to 100 at series start. This is our calculation, not a published total-return index, and the methodology page must say so.
Median new home sale price
Median sale price of NEW houses sold — not the median price of all U.S. homes. New-build medians run above the all-homes median and move with builder product mix. Must be labelled 'median new home sale price' in all user-facing copy; never 'median home'. investable is false per plan §14: home-price change is not a real-estate investment return.
Median US household income
Nominal (current-dollar) median. Published each September for the prior calendar year, so the latest observation lags by 9 to 21 months; results must show the observation year rather than implying a current figure.
Attribution
- BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.
- World Bank Commodity Price Data (The Pink Sheet), licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Monthly U.S. equity price and dividend data from Robert J. Shiller.
- Constructed from monthly price and dividend data published by Robert J. Shiller.
- U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, New Residential Sales.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements, Historical Income Tables: Households, Table A-1.
Not published yet
A Bitcoin series is built and waiting on a data licence from an exchange. Until that is granted it appears nowhere on this site, and we hold no data for it. We would rather be one series short than publish figures we are not entitled to redistribute.
What we do not publish
We do not redistribute any series in bulk, and we do not present any figure as ours. Where a series is constructed rather than published as-is — the equity total-return series is built from published price and dividend data — the page that shows it says so.