Turkey arithmetic
Stuff’s story about the price of Christmas food has the headline “Festive food hits Kiwis’ wallets”, and the even more misleading HTML page title “Christmas Dinner Takes Bigger Dent from Wallets.” The story says
A traditional Christmas dinner with roast chicken or lamb, seasonal vegetables, nibbles and pavlova will set you back about $67.31, up from $54.60 in 2002.
The problem, as usual with stories comparing past and current prices, is that dollars are smaller than they used to be. In this case the CPI isn’t really the answer — $54.60 in 2002 money is worth about $70 in today’s money, but that just tells us Christmas dinner has gone up less than the average for the CPI basket of goods.
The dent in wallets really depends on how the price compares to income. If the price had increased as fast as mean household income it would now be $76.38, if it had increased as fast as median household income it would now be $77.55, and if it had increased as fast as the minimum wage it would be $92.18 (StatsNZ, MoBIE).
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
Even more frustrating, was the lack of a link to show where they did the shopping or how much of what they were buying – like how they got a lamb leg roast to feed a family of four for $15. No-one I know believes any such thing exists!
11 years ago
I’d be very happy if purchasing Christmas dinner did indeed take a bigger dent from my wallet, as per the HTML title. The fewer dents, the better.
11 years ago