The Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-3i), which measures consumer good variations in households composed primarily of individuals aged 60 or older, showed a variation of 0.69% in the third quarter of 2018. The CPI-3i was up 5.15% year-over-year. With this result, the indicator varied above the Consumer Price Index (CPI-BR), which stood at 4.64% in the same period.

Between the second and third quarters of 2018, the CPI-3i dropped 1.61 percentage points, falling from 2.30% to 0.69%. Five of the eight expense categories that comprise the index recorded decreases in their variations. The Food group was the main driver behind this downward trend, with prices varying from 2.50% to -1.57%. Within this expense category, the item driving this decrease was vegetables, which saw a -31.93% drop in the third quarter, against 12.31% in the previous quarter.

The Housing (3.08% to 1.74%), Health and Personal Care (2.55% to 1.20%), Transport (2.39% to 0.73%) and Clothing items (1.05% to -0.55%) groups also contributed to the downward trend of the CPI-3i. The behavior of the following items is worth mentioning for each of these categories: household power bill (13.97% to 5.27%), medication in general (3.17% to 0.47%), gasoline (7.83% to 1.79%) and clothing (1.26% to -1.01%).

On the other hand, the Education, Reading and Recreation (-0.98% to 2.21%), Communication (0.09% to 0.22%) and Miscellaneous Expenses (0.35% to 0.66%) groups recorded increasing variation rates. The items that most contributed to such variations were tours (-4.29% to 7.40%), household phone bill (-1.41% to 0.00%) and cigarettes (0.01% to 2.63%).

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