Childcare is the average amount spent by all households, not only by the households which have childcare expenses. I spent essentially $0 on childcare now that my kids are old enough to stay home alone if my spouse and I go out. I expect to continue to spend $0 for the next 3-4 decades.
> Housing is underweighted in rents and overweighted in owner equivalent rent.
About 2/3 of Americans "own" their home. The owner-equivalent rent also happens to be about 2/3 the sum of (owner equivalent rent plus rent). That is not an accident, but rather is causally linked.
Also though you may not notice it but your taxes are probably going up every year to cover additional public child care costs even if you aren’t paying directly.
Medical is probably one of the biggest mismatch categories though
Two qurstions:
1. What does that even mean?
2. For what use?
> They should also add real estate and other assets to the inflation calculation.
There is plenty of tracking of asset prices. Why should it be part of generic (i.e., consumer) inflation, other than to break all the processes that depend on that measuring consumer prices as distinct from producer prices, asset prices, etc.?
Which should be changed, under the constraint that they must sum to 100?