Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2004: Interview Survey and Detailed Expenditure Files (ICPSR 4416)

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The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) program provides a continuous and comprehensive flow of data on the buying habits of American consumers including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit (families and single consumers) characteristics. These data are used widely in economic research and analysis, and in support of revisions of the Consumer Price Index.

The CE program is comprised of two separate components (each with its own questionnaire and independent sample), the quarterly Interview Survey and the Diary Survey (ICPSR 4415). This data collection contains the quarterly Interview Survey data, which was designed to collect data on major items of expense which respondents could be expected to recall for 3 months or longer. These included relatively large expenditures, such as those for property, automobiles, and major durable goods, and those that occurred on a regular basis, such as rent or utilities. The Interview Survey does not collect data on expenses for housekeeping supplies, personal care products, and nonprescription drugs, which contribute about 5 to 15 percent of total expenditures.

The microdata in this collection are available as SAS, SPSS, and STATA datasets or ASCII comma-delimited files. The 2004 Interview Survey release contains five groups of Interview data files (FMLY, MEMB, MTAB, ITAB, and ITAB_IMPUTE), 50 EXPN files, and four processing files.

The FMLY, MEMB, MTAB, ITAB, and ITAB_IMPUTE files are organized by the calendar quarter of the year in which the data were collected. There are five quarterly datasets for each of these files, running from the first quarter of 2004 through the first quarter of 2005. The FMLY file contains consumer unit (CU) characteristics, income, and summary level expenditures; the MEMB file contains member characteristics and income data; the MTAB file contains expenditures organized on a monthly basis at the Universal Classification Code (UCC) level; the ITAB file contains income data converted to a monthly time frame and assigned to UCCs; and the ITAB_IMPUTE file contains the five imputation variants of the income data converted to a monthly time frame and assigned to UCCs.

The EXPN files contain expenditure data and ancillary descriptive information, often not available on the FMLY or MTAB files, in a format similar to the Interview questionnaire. In addition to the extra information available on the EXPN files, users can identify distinct spending categories easily and reduce processing time due to the organization of the files by type of expenditure. Each of the 50 EXPN files contains five quarters of data, directly derived from their respective questionnaire sections.

The processing files enhance computer processing and tabulation of data, and provide descriptive information on item codes. The processing files are: (1) aggregation scheme files used in the published consumer expenditure survey interview tables and integrated tables (ISTUB and INTSTUB), (2) a UCC file that contains UCCs and their abbreviated titles, identifying the expenditure, income, or demographic item represented by each UCC, (3) two vehicle make and model files (VEHI and CAPIVEHI), and (4) files containing sample programs (See Section VII.A. SAMPLE PROGRAM). The processing files are further explained in the Interview User Guide, Section III.F.6. "PROCESSING FILES." There is also a second user guide, User's Guide to Income Imputation in the CE, which includes information on how to appropriately use the imputed income data.

Demographic and family characteristics data include age, sex, race, marital status, and CU relationships for each CU member. Income information, such as wage, salary, unemployment compensation, child support, and alimony, as well as information on the employment of each CU member age 14 and over was also collected.

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