Should the government create a distinct consumer price index for older Americans?
After the Social Security Administration announced in October that it wouldn’t be paying a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for the first time in 35 years, Rep. Dan Lipinski got an earful. In letters, E-mails, phone calls, and town-hall meetings, seniors expressed alarm: “We are not sure what the government is measuring here, but they are not measuring what our costs are,” Lipinski, an Illinois Democrat, recalled hearing from his constituents. Upon closer inspection of the issue, he came across a technicality in the arithmetic used to determine COLAs that senior advocates have long considered unfair. Uncle Sam relies on COLAs to protect the purchasing power of Social Security checks from inflation. The size of Social Security COLAs is calculated using a gauge of inflation known as the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W. When it rises by one tenth of a percent or more from one year to the next, Social Security pays a COLA to reflect this increa
