经济学人丨测量通货膨胀的方法 | 2017.08.12 | 总第991期

IN 1946 the government convened a committee to assess the official cost-of-living index , which had been introduced in 1914. The conclusion was damning. The “alterations in consumption habits since 1914 have made the official index out-of-date”, it noted, recommending that it be “terminated” . The measure was hardly in touch with how ordinary folk spent their money; beer was excluded from the calculations.

1946年英国政府召开了委员会来评估官方生活消费指数,这曾在1914年被提出。最后以争论不休收场。记录着这样一段话“自1914年以后人们消费习惯的改变使得曾经提出的消费指数过时了。”并建议终止。测算并没有涉及到普通民众怎样花钱，因为就连啤酒都不在测量范围内。

• Convened  召开( convene的过去式 )

• cost-of-living index生活费指数

• Terminated 终止的；有限的

• Exclude from 把…排除在外

Statisticians have been grasping towards a better measure of inflation ever since. In March the Office for National Statistics (ONS) introduced a new headline measure, “consumer-prices index including owner-occupiers’ housing costs” (CPIH). On July 31st the CPIH received the seal of approval from the UK Statistics Authority. The new index may be the most sophisticated so far. But it is still an imperfect gauge of changes to living standards.

统计学家从那时到现在都在寻找一个更好的统计方法。三月份的时候国家统计局（ONS）引入了一种新测量方式，即“消费价格指数，其中包括业主居住费用在内的消费价格指数（CPIH）”。七月三十一日消费价格指数测量法得到了英国国家统计局的批准。新的指数可能是目前为止最复杂的。但是它仍然是衡量生活标准变化不完美的标尺。

• the seal of 印章

• Headline 头条，核心

The longest-running measure of inflation in Britain is the retail-prices index, introduced in 1947. The RPI, which includes mortgage-interest payments, has historically been used for the government’s inflation target and to increase pensions and the like. Yet in 2013 it lost its designation as a national statistic. One problem was the crude way in which it averaged thousands of prices that comprise the index, which has meant that the RPI measure of inflation has tended to be higher than other measures (see chart).

1947年引进的零售价格指数是英国使用时间最长的测量通货膨涨方法。零售价格指数包含抵押贷款的利息支付，它被历史性的用作于政府通货膨涨目标以及增加养老金或者类似这些方面的增长。然而，在2013年它失去了国家统计的称号。其中一个问题是它计算的方法太粗糙,它将上千种数据进行求平均值,其中包括指数。这就意味着零售价格指数计算出来的数值比其他方法计算的偏大（见表格）。

• Designation n. 制定；名称；指示；选派

• Crude adj. 粗糙的；天然的；未加工的；粗鲁的

• Comprise 包含；由…组成

• longest-running 长期有效的，使用时间最长的

• retail-prices index零售价格指数

• mortgage-interest payments抵押贷款的利息支付

Despite its flaws , the ONS continues to produce the RPI. This is in part because the index is written into the contracts of inflation-protected government bonds and student loans. These days, however, the consumer-prices index (CPI) is the measure that matters. Launched in 1996, the CPI uses a better formula than the RPI’s to calculate average price changes. Since 2003 the Bank of England has targeted an inflation rate of 2%, based on the CPI.

忽略其不足，国家统计局仍然使用零售价格指数。部分原因是零售价格指数被当作标尺写进了通货膨胀保值国债与学生贷款合同中。然而目前，消费指数（CPI）才真正起作用。1996年消费指数推出了比零售价格指数更好的公式来计算价格变化的平均值。从2003年以来，英国央行根据消费指数计算将通货膨胀率目标定为2%。

• Flaw n. 瑕疵；裂纹；缺点

It is not without its critics, however. Although rent is included in the CPI, the costs of owning a home—estate agents’ fees, mortgages and so on—are not, even though they represent over 15% of household spending.（读者试译） CPIH has been developed to fill this gap. Unlike the RPI, it does not include a direct measure of mortgage costs. Instead it uses a technique called “rental equivalence” to estimate the costs faced by owner-occupiers, which in effect asks the question: “How much would I have to pay in rent to live in a home like mine?” These costs are rising by about 2% a year.

尽管如此，消费指数也并不是没有遭到质疑。 （期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~） 包括业主居住费用在内的消费价格指数将会用来填补这个缺口。不像零售消费指数那样，消费指数没有包含直接计算抵押贷款消费的方法。取而代之的是它使用了一种被称为“等值租金”的技术来评估每个业主面临的住房消费。这个办法实际上是在问这样的问题：“我必须要花多少钱来租这个房子？”这类消费每年增长2%。

CPI and CPIH tend to track each other closely. Nonetheless, an official review by Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank, recommended that CPIH should be the main headline index produced by the ONS. In time the CPIH may become the preferred measure of the Treasury and the Bank of England. Yet no matter how reliable it is, a single number cannot account for a simple but often ignored truth: different Britons experience different inflation rates.

消费价格指数和包括业主居住费用在内的消费价格指数两者联系密切。尽管这样，一个智囊团，财政研究所的保罗·约翰逊提出了一个官方观点， 他建议包括业主居住费用在内的消费价格指数应该是统计局提出的核心测量方法。迟早包括业主居住费用在内的消费价格指会成为财政部和英格兰央行偏爱的测量方法。然而，一个数字并不能解释一个简单但常被忽视的事实：不同的英国地区有不同的通货膨胀率。

For instance, because of London’s bubbly housing market, a CPIH measure that focused on the capital might have risen faster in recent years than one for other parts of the country. Poor households, meanwhile, spend more of their budgets on food, and in the 2000s food prices were rising quickly. One paper found that from 2003 to 2014, the average inflation rate for those in the bottom income quintile was 3.4% compared with 3% for the top quintile . By comparison, tweaks to the headline measure seem fairly trivial.

比如，由于伦敦的房产泡沫，聚焦首都的包括业主居住费用在内的消费价格指数比其他地区的上升更快。与此同时，特困户花了更多的预算在食物上，而且本世纪初，食物价格迅速飙升。一篇报告指出从2003到2014年，收入最高的五分之一人群其平均通货膨胀率为3%，与他们相比收入最低的五分之一人群的平均通货膨胀率为3.4%。通过比较，调整主要测量方法似乎还有很多细节要处理。

• bubbly   起泡的

• bottom income quintile 底收入的五分之一

• the top quintile最高的五分之一

• Trivial 不重要的；琐碎的；琐细的

翻译 ▍ ww；无何不可

审核 ▍ 竞风之翼

图文编辑 ▍Ternence

责任编辑 ▍毛毛