Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1991: Interview Survey, Detailed Expenditure Files (ICPSR 6262)
Version Date: Jun 3, 2026 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
United States Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06262.v2
Version V2 (see more versions)
Summary View help for Summary
The ongoing Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) 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:
- A quarterly Interview Survey in which each consumer unit in the sample is interviewed every three months over a 15-month period, and
- 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 that comprise this data collection were created from all the major expenditure sections of the Interview Survey questionnaires. These files contain more detailed expenditure records than those found in the Interview Survey data tapes. In addition, the Detailed Expenditure Files include family characteristics (FMLY) files and income and member characteristics (MEMB) files identical to those found in the Interview Survey.
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Subject Terms View help for Subject Terms
Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
Smallest Geographic Unit View help for Smallest Geographic Unit
Metropolitan Statistical Areas
Distributor(s) View help for Distributor(s)
Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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A new Interview Survey questionnaire was introduced beginning in April 1991, resulting in significant changes to the 1991 Interview Survey data files. Several files, including Purchases of Household Appliances, Inventory of Household Appliances, Inventory and Purchases of Owned Vehicles, Disposal of Owned Vehicles, Trips and Vacations, and Vehicle Make/Model Codes and Titles, have been moved to the Detailed Expenditure Files for 1991 and subsequent years. The documentation has been completely restructured beginning in 1991 to reflect these changes.
- For additional information on this study, please visit the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website.
- This collection is part of the Consumer Expenditure Survey Series.
Study Purpose View help for Study Purpose
The Consumer Expenditure Surveys are primarily used to revise the relative importance of goods and services in the market basket of the Consumer Price Index. The data are unique in enabling data users to examine the association of expenditures and income of consumers to consumer unit characteristics, valuable to entities such as government and private agencies, economic policymakers, and market researchers.
Sample View help for 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 View help for Universe
Total civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the United States.
Unit(s) of Observation View help for Unit(s) of Observation
Data Source View help for Data Source
Personal interviews
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
Description of Variables View help for Description of Variables
The variables in this study pertain to expenses, such as household appliances, owned and rental living, rented or owned vehicles, and medical expenses. Demographic variables include race/ethnicity, sex, and age.
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
1995-01-11
Version History View help for Version History
2026-06-03 This study was updated to convert the previously released data into multiple file formats (i.e., SAS, SPSS, Stata and R) along with standardized documentation and ICPSR Codebooks.
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:
- United States Department of Labor. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1991: Interview Survey, Detailed Expenditure Files. ICPSR06262-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2026-06-03. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06262.v2
2006-01-12 All files were removed from dataset 64 and flagged as study-level files, so that they will accompany all downloads.
1995-01-11 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Performed consistency checks.
- Created variable labels and/or value labels.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Weight View help for Weight
There are 45 weight variables in all FMLY files, WTREP01-WTREP44 and FINLWT21. All the WTREP variables are half-sample replicate weights that should be used in variance computation. Weight FINLWT21 should be employed in estimating weighted statistics. For more information on weighting and weights, please refer to the P.I. Codebook.
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These data are freely available to data users at ICPSR member institutions. The curation and dissemination of this study are provided by the institutional members of ICPSR. How do I access ICPSR data if I am not at a member institution?
This study is provided by ICPSR. ICPSR provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community.