New Index

The nation's most carefully watched economic indicator--the Bureau of Labor Statistics' cost of living index, to which the wages of 2.5 million U.S. workers are tied--will appear this week in a new statistical form. It has undergone the first major changes in a decade, to make it better reflect the expenses incurred by a modern family.

Some 75 new items are included in the revised 400-item index, as a result of a survey of 12,000 families in 66 cities. Among the new items: funeral costs, home-and auto-finance charges, hotel-motel rates, snack prices, parking fees, college tuitions, and the prices of textbooks, magazines and paperback books. Among the prices that have been dropped are those for such items as rolled oats, men's work gloves and lemons, which have become less significant in the family budget of the 1960s.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has assigned different values to the food, housing, transportation and service sections of the index to get a more accurate reading of monthly price movements. Food is expected to be less important than in the existing index, and housing and transportation relatively more so. With the first sniff of inflation in the air, a key question is whether the new index, with its heavier emphasis on services, will rise faster than the old one, which has crept up 1.2% annually since 1961.

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