Consumer Expenditure Surveys, 1980-1989: Interview Surveys, for Household-Level Analysis (ICPSR 9851)

Version Date: Jan 12, 2006

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Principal Investigator(s):
Julie A. Nelson

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09851.v1

Version V1

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Summary

This data collection constitutes a reorganization of data from the Interview Survey component of the Consumer Expenditure Surveys produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the years 1980-1989. The Interview Surveys collect data on the expenditures, household characteristics, and income of a sample of consumer units. Interviews are conducted quarterly for a period of 15 months. While the original files are ordered by calendar quarter and calendar month, the reorganized files in this collection use the consumer unit (equivalent to a family or household) as the unit of analysis. The reorganization facilitates analysis of expenditure patterns of individual consumer units. Two kinds of files are presented in this collection: detailed and summary. The detailed files, Consumer Unit (CU), BLS Aggregated Data (BLS), Member Data (MEM), and Expenditure Tabulations (MT) files, retain almost all of the information from the original Interview Survey files (FMLY, MEMB, and MTAB). The detailed files are named according to the calendar year in which the consumer unit's fifth interview took place. Expenditures are expressed as monthly or quarterly totals in 472 categories. The summary files, Sum of Quarterly Expenditures by Consumer Price Index Aggregation (SUMQ), Summary (SUMMARY), and Aggregated Quarterly Expenditures, 1984-1989 (BLSSUM), aggregate expenditures by type and by quarter or year. The SUMQ files (one for each year) contain information on expenditures aggregated over interview quarters in approximately 70 aggregate categories. The SUMMARY file contains annual expenditures in the same 70 categories, along with selected demographic variables, for those consumer units that participated in the survey for a full year. For convenience, two files containing United States city average Consumer Price Indices corresponding to the aggregate goods categories by month and by year are provided. The BLSSUM file contains quarterly summed expenditures for all consumer units from 1984 on, using the aggregation scheme followed by the BLS files.

Citation

Nelson, Julie A. Consumer Expenditure Surveys, 1980-1989: Interview Surveys, for Household-Level Analysis. [distributor], 2006-01-12. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09851.v1

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Funding

National Science Foundation (SES-8921634)

Subject Terms

Geographic Coverage

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Time Period(s)

1979-10 -- 1989-11

Date of Collection

1980-01 -- 1989-12
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Sample

The Consumer Expenditure Survey is based on a national probability sample of households. Households are selected from primary sampling units (PSUs), which consist of counties (or parts thereof), groups of counties, or independent cities. The set of sample PSUs used for the survey is composed of 101 areas, of which 85 urban areas have also been selected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the Consumer Price Index program. The sampling frame from which housing units were selected was generated from the 1980 Census 100-percent detail file, augmented by new construction permits and coverage improvement techniques used to eliminate recognized deficiencies in that census. The sample design is a rotating panel survey in which one-fifth of the sample is dropped and a new group added each quarter. Each panel is interviewed for five consecutive quarters and then dropped from the survey.

Universe

Total civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States.

Data Source

public use data tapes produced by the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data Type(s)

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Original Release Date

1994-04-01

Version History

2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
  • Nelson, Julie A. CONSUMER EXPENDITURE SURVEYS, 1980-1989: INTERVIEW SURVEYS, FOR HOUSEHOLD-LEVEL ANALYSIS. Davis, CA: Julie A. Nelson [producer], 1992. Washington, DC: United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics [original producer], 1981-1989. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1994. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR09851.v1

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 55 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 56 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.

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Notes