True Cost Basket Index
A tract-level map of what a household actually pays.
The national inflation headline averages a country with a forty-percent spread between the cheapest and the most expensive rent zones into a single CPI number. The TCBI replaces that headline with a five-domain basket cost — gas, pantry, plate, restaurant, and a household composite — resolved down to the census tract inside fifteen mega-counties and the Neighborhood Tabulation Area inside New York City. Every value carries a provenance flag.
What this is, and what it is not
The True Cost Basket Index is an interactive, federal-grade map of weekly household cost across the United States. Five domains: D1 Pump (regular gasoline from EIA), D2 Pantry (BLS APU regional staples), D3 Plate (the USDA Thrifty Food Plan applied to a Mediterranean family-of-four week), D4 Restaurant (BLS CPI Food Away From Home), and a D5 Composite that weights the housing-correlated domains together with the gas series. Click the national choropleth into a state, the state into a county, and where the tool publishes tract resolution, the county into its tracts.
The tool is not a federal benchmark and it is not a forecast. The composite is a transparent weighted index documented in the methodology panel inside the tool and in the audit workbook below. Where federal data does not publish at the tract grain, the tool inherits the state baseline scaled by the tract rent ratio, clamped to [0.7, 1.5] — and flags every inheritance. It is honest about the limits of the source series.
The publication snapshot below uses EIA Weekly Retail Gasoline as of May 11, 2026, BLS APU and CPI from the most recent monthly release, Census ACS5 2023 for the housing baseline, and the USDA Thrifty Food Plan reference table from September 2024. The vintage stamp on every page tile names the source date so a reader knows exactly which version of the federal data they are looking at.
Built for households, planners, and analysts.
Four use cases the tool is engineered to support — with the same evidence that drives them.
Relocation comparison
You're separating, transitioning, or weighing a move. Compare two metros, two counties, or two neighborhoods on weekly basket cost. The map shows the tradeoff the spreadsheet would otherwise require you to assemble from seven federal sources by hand.
Pay-rate calibration
An HR team setting a geographic differential, or a contractor negotiating a per-diem, can read the composite directly. The flag taxonomy distinguishes a live regional value from a proxy — useful when defending a number to a finance reviewer.
Economic and policy research
The tract-level breakouts inside the fifteen mega-counties surface the spread inside a single metro — the gap between Beverly Hills and South Los Angeles, between Manhattan and the Bronx — that a state or metro average flattens out. Useful for community-development, EITC, and food-security work.
Veteran and family budgeting
A fixed-income household weighing a move to be near family, or a separating servicemember choosing a first civilian zip code, can see the local composite next to its source basket. The tool is built to be readable without an econ degree.
Four moves to get the answer you came for.
The tool is designed to work without a manual. These four moves cover roughly ninety percent of how people use it.
Pick a domain
Use the basket toggle to color the map by Pump, Pantry, Plate, Restaurant, or Composite. Each domain has its own ramp and source citation.
Drill into a state
Click any state to expand into its counties. The same domain coloring carries through, with a county-level value and a state-level baseline for comparison.
Open a tract view
Fifteen mega-counties publish tract resolution. NYC publishes 262 Neighborhood Tabulation Areas across all five boroughs. Other counties stop at the county grain.
Read the flag
Every value tile carries a provenance flag. LIVE means direct federal value. PROXY means a documented inheritance rule (state, region, or PADD) with the formula named.
The tract rent ratio fc is clamped to [0.7, 1.5]. That keeps extrapolation honest in the very-low and very-high rent extremes — rural counties and Manhattan — where the housing baseline starts to break down. The clamp is documented in the audit workbook's Calibration_Audit sheet.
True Cost Basket Index — interactive map.
The publication build loads inline. The full-screen button below opens it in a dedicated tab.
The publication build is a large single-file bundle. Some shared hosts cap inline file sizes — if you see a blank frame, use the full-screen link above. Same data, same controls, same vintage stamps.
Every domain, attributed.
Seven federal and geographic sources. Live values where the series publishes at the requested grain; documented proxies where it does not. The methodology one-pager linked below is the print-ready summary.
| Source | What it provides | Flag class |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates 2023 |
Median gross rent, median household income, total population — the housing baseline and pop-weighting | LIVE · Tract / County |
| U.S. Energy Information Administration Weekly Retail Gasoline 2026-05-11 |
State and PADD-region regular gasoline prices — D1 Pump | LIVE · State / PADD |
| Bureau of Labor Statistics Average Price Data (APU) |
Regional pantry staples across four Census regions — D2 Pantry | LIVE · Region |
| Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Food Away From Home |
National restaurant baseline (CUUR0000SEFV) scaled by state-level cost ratio — D4 Restaurant | LIVE → SCALED |
| USDA Food & Nutrition Service Thrifty Food Plan Sept 2024 |
Family-of-four weekly basket calibration anchor — D3 Plate | LIVE · National |
| us-atlas v3 (Mike Bostock, ISC) | Pre-projected Albers USA TopoJSON for state and county geometry — from Census TIGER/Line | Geometry |
| NYC Department of City Planning Neighborhood Tabulation Areas 2020 |
262 NTA polygons across all five boroughs — tract-centroid point-in-polygon aggregation | LIVE · NYC NTA |
About the composite
The TCBI composite is a weighted blend: forty percent the Pump domain (non-housing-correlated, damped at the tract grain), sixty percent the housing-correlated basket. The tract value is state_baseline × tract_fc where tract_fc is the tract median rent divided by the state average median rent, clamped to [0.7, 1.5]. Pump uses a damped version of the same ratio. Every component, every weight, and every clamp is disclosed in the methodology panel inside the tool and in the audit workbook.
It does not invent tract-level restaurant prices because BLS CPI does not publish at that grain — D4 inherits the county value flat with a COUNTY-LEVEL flag. It does not extrapolate beyond the clamp range. It does not aggregate personal data, set cookies, or call external trackers. It does not claim to predict household expenditure — only to show the regional cost context the federal series support.
Download and further reading.
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TCBI Audit Workbook (.xlsx)The full provenance trace: Day_Log of every change, Bundle_Requests, Flag_Taxonomy, Mega_County_Roster, Calibration_Audit, and Place_Seeds. Use this if you want to verify a single value back to its source cell.Download .xlsx
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Methodology one-pager (HTML / print)A printable one-page reference: federal data identifiers, the core formulas, the provenance flag taxonomy, the vintage timeline, and the documented known constraints. Print preview is calibrated for US Letter at 0.5-inch margins.Open One-Pager
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Open the tool full-screenThe full publication build in its own tab — useful for sharing a direct link or working without the page chrome. Same data, same controls, same provenance flags.Open Full-Screen
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Sister tool — True Shelter and Family Cost IndexThe fixed-monthly shelter and childcare counterpart at the county grain: rent, mortgage, insurance, childcare. Same provenance discipline, same federal sources, county resolution across all 3,222 counties + Puerto Rico.Read TSCI Case Study
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Veteran Livability IndexThe county-level decision tool for veteran outcomes: six metric overlays, eighteen fields per county, the VA disability purchasing-power calculator.Open VLI
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Analytics portfolioThe full set of shipped deliverables — case studies, dashboards, model cards, process improvement work.Back to Analytics
Built to be used, not to be admired.
This tool exists because households deserve the same tract-level resolution that real-estate sites, advertising-targeting platforms, and pricing-optimization teams already enjoy. The data is federal public domain. The methodology is disclosed. If you find a value that looks wrong, a clamp that distorts the read, or a use case the layout does not support — tell me. The next vintage will be better for it.