Any wonk types know what ever happened to the CPI-E?

[AnnaLee]

1. Here is a little info. I hope someone does weigh in on the decision not to use it.

A search at the BLS site for the CPI-E gives the results at this link:
Search results

I might read these to find out what happened following the 1987 legislation and the development by BLS of the CPI-E. What we do know is that it isn't used to determine the yearly increases. This is from one of the articles I found in the search:

Experimental price index for elderly consumers Nathan Amble and Ken Stewart

"...The Consumer Price Index (CPI) of the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures the average change in prices over time for a fixed market basket of goods and services for two population groups. The CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) represents the spending habits of about 80 percent of the population of the United States. The CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) is a subset of the CPI-U and represents about 32 percent of the total U.S. population.

The 1987 amendments to the Older Americans Act of 1965 directed BLS to develop an experimental index for a third population of consumers: those 62 years of age and older. In its 1988 report to Congress, BLS observed that from December 1982 to December 1987, the experimental consumer price idea for older Americans rose slightly faster than the CPI-U and CPI-W.1 (See table 1.)

This article updates the analysis of the behavior of the experimental index for older Americans for the period from December 1987 through December 1993. Over this 6-year period, the experimental price index rose 28.7 percent, slightly more than the increases of 26.3 percent for the CPI-U and 25.5 percent for the CPI-W...."

I hadn't realized it went back so far.