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What This Comparison Shows

The Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment is one of the most watched economic indicators in the world, with seventy years of monthly readings built from live interviews. We put the same five questions to a census-weighted synthetic US panel and applied Michigan's published scoring.

It is the hardest test we can set ourselves. We are not asking whether our number feels right. We ask the same questions Michigan asks, score them the same way Michigan does, and see how close two completely independent methods land.

The Five Questions, Word for Word

These are the exact questions from the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers. The only thing we change is who answers them.

1. “We are interested in how people are getting along financially these days. Would you say that you (and your family living there) are better off or worse off financially than you were a year ago?”
2. “Now looking ahead—do you think that a year from now you (and your family living there) will be better off financially, worse off, or just about the same as now?”
3. “Now turning to business conditions in the country as a whole—do you think that during the next twelve months we’ll have good times financially, or bad times, or what?”
4. “Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely—that in the country as a whole we’ll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will have periods of widespread unemployment or depression, or what?”
5. “About the big things people buy for their homes—such as furniture, a refrigerator, stove, television, and things like that. Generally speaking, do you think now is a good time or a bad time for people to buy major household items?”

How It's Scored

We apply Michigan's own relative-score formula and index constants to produce the Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS). The calculation stays exactly the same. The only difference is who supplies the answers.