TY - JOUR AU - Sabelhaus, John AU - Johnson, David AU - Ash, Stephen AU - Swanson, David AU - Garner, Thesia AU - Greenlees, John AU - Henderson, Steve TI - Is the Consumer Expenditure Survey Representative by Income? JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 19589 PY - 2013 Y2 - October 2013 DO - 10.3386/w19589 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19589 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19589.pdf N1 - Author contact info: John Sabelhaus Washington Center for Equitable Growth E-Mail: jsabelhaus@gmail.com David Johnson ISR 426 Thompson, Rm 3234 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 United States Tel: 5713296759 E-Mail: johnsods@umich.edu Stephen Ash US Census Bureau E-Mail: Stephen.Eliot.Ash@census.gov David Swanson U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics E-Mail: Swanson.David@bls.gov Thesia Garner Bureau of Labor Statistics U.S. Department of Labor 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE Washington, DC 20212 Tel: 202 691 6576 E-Mail: garner.thesia@bls.gov John Greenlees U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE Washington, DC 20212 Tel: 202-691-6960 E-Mail: greenlees.john@bls.gov Steve Henderson Bureau of Labor Statistics E-Mail: Henderson.Steve@bls.gov M1 - published as John Sabelhaus, David Johnson, Stephen Ash, David Swanson, Thesia I. Garner, John Greenlees, Steve Henderson. "Is the Consumer Expenditure Survey Representative by Income?," in Christopher D. Carroll, Thomas F. Crossley, and John Sabelhaus, editors, "Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures" University of Chicago Press (2015) M3 - presented at "Conference on Research in Income and Wealth", December 2-3, 2011 AB - Aggregate under-reporting of household spending in the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) can result from two fundamental types of measurement errors: higher-income households (who presumably spend more than average) are under-represented in the CE estimation sample, or there is systematic under-reporting of spending by at least some CE survey respondents. Using a new data set linking CE units to zip-code level average Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), we show that the very highest-income households are less likely to respond to the survey when they are sampled, but unit non-response rates are not associated with income over most of the income distribution. Although increasing representation at the high end of the income distribution could in principle significantly raise aggregate CE spending, the low reported average propensity to spend for higher-income respondent households could account for at least as much of the aggregate shortfall in total spending. ER -