| Major groups | Number of items | Weights | Approximate number of price quotations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food and tobacco | 187 | 385.9 | 19000 |
| Clothing and footwear | 79 | 134.1 | 10000 |
| Rent, fuel and light | 30 | 55.1 | 8000 |
| Furniture, household appliances and operation | 138 | 119.1 | 15000 |
| Health and personal care | 47 | 29.7 | 7000 |
| Transport and communications | 68 | 124.0 | 7500 |
| Education, entertainment, leisure (excl. services of hotel and restaurant) | 145 | 90.4 | 11500 |
| Personal goods and services of the lodging trade and other goods | 44 | 61.7 | 4000 |
| Total | 738 | 1000.0 | 82000 |
Note: For non-centrally covered positions, the following numbers of price quotations are generally collected per priced item: in cities of up to 20,000 inhabitants: 4; in cities of 20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants: 6; in cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants: 8. Exceptions are: rents: per housing society selected and regulated (uniform) prices: 1 price quotation.
Money expenditure does not include contributions to old-age and social insurance. Health expenditure is included only in so far as costs were incurred by private persons. The major part of the costs (visits to the doctor, stays in hospital, prescribed pharmaceuticals and other applications and appliances) is borne by the public health insurance and therefore not taken into account in the weighting scheme. Income tax and other direct taxes were not treated as money expenditure, except for the motor vehicle tax which is included in the weighting scheme. Income in kind, money transfers, donations, contributions and similar payments were excluded. For credit purchases and the hire purchase of commodities, the full purchase price at the time of purchase was recorded. Sales and purchases of used goods are included, but not shown as separate positions in the index. Administrative fees, property insurance contributions are included (household - house and content - and other property insurances, motor insurance).
Prices are recorded around the middle of each month, by investigators, directly at the reporting units. For some goods (e.g. electricity, gas, water), the written price lists of the enterprises are used, and rents of dwellings are covered by means of questionnaires. Officially-fixed uniform tariffs (passenger transport by rail, postal tariffs) are collected centrally on the basis of the tariff lists. The current regular prices and the comparable prices for the preceding month are collected by the investigators at the reporting units. Individual prices are then grossed up to average prices for communities (simple arithmetic means of the prices for the respective month and of comparable prices for the previous month). Discount and sale prices are not recorded. Black-market prices, hire-purchase and credit terms are not collected.
The price collector selects the specific commodities according to their turnover size in co-operation with the reporting unit.
The simple arithmetic mean is used up to the calculation of the Land average prices and the Land price relatives. To compute average prices and price relatives for the territory of the five new Laender as a whole, the Land average prices and Land price relatives are weighted according to the population of each Land. Annual averages for the main index and the major index groups are computed using the simple arithmetic mean of the monthly indices.
A new series (base July 1990-June 1991 = 100) is now computed but the relevant methodological information series was not available in the ILO at the time the present volume was published.
Eilbericht und Monatsbericht der Fachserie 17, Reihe 7, Preise und Preisindizes für die Lebenshaltung (Wiesbaden).