Consumer Expenditure Survey Family-Level Extracts -- 1980:1 - 2003:2This page contains the NBER collection of the Consumer Expenditure Survey. The Consumer Expenditure Survey, done by the Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, collects information from the Nation's households and families on their buying habits (expenditures), income, and characteristics. The strength of the survey is that it allows data users to relate the expenditures and income of consumers to the characteristics of those consumers. The survey consists of two components, a quarterly Interview Survey and a weekly Diary Survey, each with its own questionnaire and sample. The extracts of the quarterly Interview Survey, initiated by John Sabelhaus and continued by Ed Harris of the Congressional Budget Office, make access to data much more straightforward.The family records data contain consumer unit information on expenditures, income, wealth, and basic household demographics. The member record data contains additional consumer unit member earnings and demographic information. 1985 Q3 and Q4 and 1995 Q3 and Q4 are not available due to a change in the sampling frame.
Both ".Z" and ".zip" files can be uncompressed with winzip. In addition, ".Z" files can be uncompressed using the UNIX uncompress command and ".zip" files can be unzipped with uncompression software. To check the ability to uncompress these files, download the small files compress.Z or compress.zip. These files give an example of how to read in .Z and .zip ASCII files into SAS for UNIX without decompressing the files. To download files in Internet Explorer, right click on them and select "Save Target As...". If the pdf documents appear to be all blank pages, get the latest Acrobat Reader at www.abobe.com. The file size for the family files is about 300 Kb compressed, 3 Mb uncompressed. The size of the member files is about 300 Kb compressed, 1.5 Mb uncompressed. The compression ratio is over 90%. Documentation, family records, member records, and FORTRAN source code is available below. The source data used to create the extracts is available only from the BLS. Internal users can access this data in a UNIX shell at /homes/data/ces_cbo or on an NBER PC via Network Neighborhood --> NBER --> home --> data --> ces_cbo Documentation, Variable List, and Sample SAS Files
FAMILY RECORDSMEMBER RECORDSFORTRAN Source CodeThe source data used to create the extracts is available from the BLS.
Contact data@nber.org with questions, comments, or suggestions.
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