Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1998: Interview Survey and Detailed Expenditure Files (ICPSR 2971)

Principal Investigator(s): United States Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Summary: The ongoing Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) provides a continuous flow of information on the buying habits of American consumers and also furnishes data to support periodic revisions of the Consumer Price Index. The survey consists of two separate components: (1) a quarterly Interview Survey in which each consumer unit in the sample is interviewed every three months over a 15-month period, and (2) a Diary Survey completed by the sample consumer units for two consecutive one-week periods. The I... (more info)

Series: Consumer Expenditure Survey Series

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United States Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1998: Interview Survey and Detailed Expenditure Files. ICPSR02971-v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2000. doi:10.3886/ICPSR02971.v1

Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02971.v1

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Summary:   The ongoing Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) provides a continuous flow of information on the buying habits of American consumers and also furnishes data to support periodic revisions of the Consumer Price Index. The survey consists of two separate components: (1) a quarterly Interview Survey in which each consumer unit in the sample is interviewed every three months over a 15-month period, and (2) a Diary Survey completed by the sample consumer units for two consecutive one-week periods. The Interview Survey was designed to collect data on major items of expense, household characteristics, and income. The expenditures covered by the survey are those that respondents can recall fairly accurately for three months or longer. In general, these expenditures include relatively large purchases, such as those for property, or expenditures that occur on a fairly regular basis, such as rent, utilities, or insurance premiums. Excluded are nonprescription drugs, household supplies, and personal care items. Including global estimates on spending for food, it is estimated that about 90 to 95 percent of expenditures are covered in the Interview Survey. The Detailed Expenditure Files were created from all the major expenditure sections of the Interview Survey questionnaires and contain the most detailed expenditure data from the Interview Survey. Parts 69-72 contain processing files used by the program in Part 73. Part 73, Documentation File, includes a sample program and lists of the data file variables by start position. Parts 74 and 75 are SAS programs that generate means, variances, standard errors, and coefficients of variation.

Subject Terms:   automobile expenses, clothing, construction costs, consumer behavior, consumer expenditures, consumption, credit, debt, demographic characteristics, durable goods, education expenditures, employment, energy consumption, families, fixed income, food costs, health expenditures, health insurance, home ownership, hospitalization, household appliances, household budgets, household expenditures, household income, housing costs, insurance, memberships, mortgage payments, property repairs, purchasing, recreation expenses, taxes, unemployment benefits, wages and salaries

Geographic Coverage:   United States

Time Period:  

• 1998

Universe:   Noninstitutional civilian population of the United States.

Data Types:   survey data

Data Collection Notes:

Starting with the 1994 collection, the Interview Survey and the Detailed Expenditure Files (EXPN) are released together in one data collection by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This release includes files from the first quarter of 1999 in addition to the files containing data from interviews conducted during the four quarters of 1998.

The codebook is provided as an MSWord 8.0 file and as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file, and the data collection instrument is provided as a PDF file.

Sample:   National probability sample of households designed to represent the total noninstitutional civilian population.

Data Source:

personal interviews

Original ICPSR Release:  2000-09-18

Version History:

• 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 78 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
• 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 77 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
• 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 76 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
• 2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 73 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

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