ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Chained volume series

Okay kiddo, have you ever tried to measure how much something has grown? Maybe you marked how tall you were on a wall every year on your birthday to see how much you’ve grown?

Well, chained volume series is kind of like that. It’s a way for grown-ups to measure how much a country’s economy has grown or declined over time. They use something called Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is the total value of goods and services produced in a country.

But measuring GDP can be tricky because prices change over time. Imagine a loaf of bread costs $2 this year, but next year it costs $3 because of inflation. If we just measure the total value of bread produced each year without accounting for price changes, it would look like the economy grew by $1, even though it’s really just the same amount of bread being sold for a higher price.

So, how do we get around this problem? We use chained volume series! It’s like marking your height on the wall not just on your birthday, but also every time you grow a little bit taller throughout the year. Instead of just looking at one year of GDP, economists look at each year and compare it to the year before, adjusting for price changes along the way.

This helps us figure out how much the economy has actually grown or declined each year. And that’s important because it helps us make decisions about spending and policy that affect everyone in the country.

So in short, chained volume series helps grown-ups measure the changes in a country’s economy over time by adjusting for changes in prices.