How are the averages weighted and what constitutes “midmanagement”?
Each item priced is a surrogate for an entire category of consumer expenditures. Chicken, for example, represents poultry purchases. The weights assigned to each item come from the Consumer Expenidtures Survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. C2ER uses the proportional distribution of spending by households in the top quintile of income and by households where the reference person is professional or managerial to assign weights representing a midmanagement standard of living.
