CPI,Cost of Living and Politics

All economic decisions are made basedupon statistics,which are supposed to comefrom facts in real life.However,people aresometimes baffled by the conclusions drawnfrom different statistics,which present differ-ent pictures of our lives and society.Consumer Price Index(CPI),one of theprice indexes that government normally usesto judge the cost of living,measures the pricesof a fixed market basket of some 300 con-sumer goods and services purchased by a“typ-ical”urban consumer(McConnell & Brue,p.

Cost of Living Blues

Chinese from all walks of life face the bite of inflation as the country’s consumer price index(CPI) soars DATA of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show the country’s consumer price index(CPI),a broad measure of inflation, grew 5.3 percent in April,after recording a 32-month-high growth of 5.4 percent in

Minimum Living Cost Program in Zhejiang

The promulgation of the Rules represents a crucial step toward institutionalization and standardization of the minimum cost of living program, which marks the end of the arbitrariness in the traditional relief behavior. In a country, to what degree the citizens enjoy human rights, it depends on the law. The minimum cost of living system has to be ensured by law in its progress toward institutionalization and standardization. This has been testified by the history of the development of the social security systems, either in Germany, which is regarded as a pioneer in modern social security systems or the United States.

Uptake of in-vitro fertilization among couples attending fertility clinic in a tertiary health institution

Objective:To identify factors that determine the uptake of in-vitro fertilization(IVF),and to determine the predicting effect of the identified factors on the uptake of IVF among couples attending fertility clinic at a tertiary health institution in Benin City,Nigeria.Methods:This study adopted a cross-sectional descriptive design.A self-structured questionnaire tested was validated and administered to 250 couples who attended fertility clinic.Data were collected from March 2021 to June 2021 and were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS)version 21.Data were presented and interpreted using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics such as Chi-square,univariate statistics and multivariate logistic regression analysis.Results:Among 250 couples,154(61.6%)were willing to adopt IVF.The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that catholic religion[odds ratio(OR)0.21,95%confident interval(CI)0.54-0.73],family income(OR 1.50,95%CI 1.10-2.00)and age(OR 1.04,95%CI 1.01-1.10)were the major factors that determined the uptake of IVF,with P-value of<0.001,0.018 and 0.031,respectively.Conclusions:The uptake of IVF could be sustained or improved on,if the government should improve on the cost of living for families,and religious leaders need to be encouraged to pass on the information about IVF to their members to be well guided about the possibilities of IVF.

Estimation of the True Cost of Living Index of food consumption for Chinese urban consumers

This paper studies the True Cost of Living Index(TCLI)of food consumption for all income groups of urban households in China from 1997 to 2012.Based on the Generalised Fechner-Thurstone direct utility function,this paper estimates the TCLI under variable preference assumptions,and also decomposes the total bias of the traditional Laspeyres Price Index(LPI)estimation of TCLI into substitution bias and preference variation bias.For all income group households,the estimated preference variation bias is found to be quite substantial.According to the finding,when it is necessary to apply the cost of living adjustment clause in any public welfare programmes,the TCLI calculation compatible with preference variation may be more appropriate than the usual Laspeyres Consumer Price Index estimation.

Saving Lives at All Costs

Military surgeons risk danger and battle primitive conditions to rescue a girl trapped for almost three days

Minimum Wages,Cost-Price Pass-Through and Real Welfare Effect of Households

The minimum wage policy should take into account production costs of enterprises and welfare benefits of families.This paper describes the pass-through process of the minimum wage costs in the enterprise sector and the household sector by building a theoretical model,investigates the impact of the minimum wage adjustment on urban household consumption utility and its price pass-through mechanism from the perspective of living costs based on several sets of databases,such as household survey,supermarket prices and industrial enterprises for the first time,and further estimates the net welfare changes including income compensation and consumption utility loss.The findings of the study are as below:(1)The price transfer behavior of enterprises is the main cause of the loss of household consumption utility.The average wage level and labor costs of enterprises rise with the increase of minimum wages.Both the cost-price pass-through elasticity estimated based on the theoretical model and the minimum wage price elasticity coefficient obtained by empirical estimation show that the price transfer behavior of enterprises leads to the rise of final consumer prices;(2)With a 10% increase in minimum wages,the overall household living costs increase by 2.47%-6.76%,and the economic living costs increase by about 122-334 yuan per quarter,among which the living costs are most affected in terms of food,shoes and clothing;(3)Under the combined effect of income compensation and consumption utility loss,the bottom 20% of households and middle 60% of households will get 658 yuan and 469-556 yuan per quarter,respectively.The findings of this paper are conducive to improving the supporting minimum wage policy by taking a number of measures simultaneously,so as to provide a path reference for promoting the realization of Chinese modernization and expanding domestic demand for common prosperity for all.