When calculating the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security payments, the Social Security Administration (SSA) bases it on data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), specifically the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W).
However, there is another index put together by the BLS– the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E)– that some argue could give Social Security recipients a higher payment if it were used to calculate the annual COLA.
