Consumer Expenditure Interview survey 2008

United States, 2008 - 2009

Reference ID

USA_2008_CE_IS_V01_M_BLS

Producer(s)

United States Census Bureau

Collections

Household income and expenditure surveys

Metadata

DDI/XML JSON

Study website Interactive tools

Created on

May 27, 2014

Last modified

Oct 21, 2019

Page views

104408

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1759

Identification

Survey ID Number

USA_2008_CE_IS_V01_M_BLS

Title

Consumer Expenditure Interview survey 2008

Country

Name	Country code
United States	USA

Series Name

Income/Expenditure/Household Survey [hh/ies]

Abstract

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) program provides a continuous and comprehensive flow of data on the buying habits of American consumers. These data are used widely in economic research and analysis, and in support of revisions of the Consumer Price Index. To meet the needs of users, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces population estimates for consumer units (CUs) of average expenditures in news releases, reports, issues, and articles in the Monthly Labor Review. Tabulated CE data are also available on the Internet and by facsimile transmission (See Section XVI. APPENDIX 5). The microdata are available on CD-ROMs.
These microdata files present detailed expenditure and income data from the Interview component of the CE for 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. The Interview survey collects data on up to 95 percent of total household expenditures. In addition to the FMLY, MEMB, MTAB, and ITAB_IMPUTE files, the microdata include files created directly from the expenditure sections of the Interview survey (EXPN files). 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.
Estimates of average expenditures in 2008 from the Interview Survey, integrated with data from the Diary Survey, will be published in the report Consumer Expenditures in 2008 (due out in 2010). A list of recent publications containing data from the CE appears at the end of this documentation.
The microdata files are in the public domain and, with appropriate credit, may be reproduced without permission. A suggested citation is: "U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditure Survey, Interview Survey, 2008."

Kind of Data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Unit of Analysis

Consumer Units

Producers and sponsors

Authoring entity/Primary investigators

Agency Name
United States Census Bureau

Sampling

Sampling Procedure

Samples for the CE are national probability samples of households designed to be representative of the total U.S. civilian population. Eligible population includes all civilian non-institutional persons.
The first step in sampling is the selection of primary sampling units (PSUs), which consist of counties (or parts thereof) or groups of counties. The set of sample PSUs used for the 2008 and 2009 samples is composed of 91 areas. The design classifies the PSUs into four categories:
21 "A" certainty PSUs are Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA's) with a population greater than 1.5 million.
38 "X" PSUs, are medium-sized MSA's.
16 "Y" PSUs are nonmetropolitan areas that are included in the CPI.
16 "Z" PSUs are nonmetropolitan areas where only the urban population data will be included in the CPI.
The sampling frame (that is, the list from which housing units were chosen) for the 2008 survey is generated from the 2000 Census of Population 100-percent-detail file. The sampling frame is augmented by new construction permits and by techniques used to eliminate recognized deficiencies in census coverage. All Enumeration Districts (EDs) from the Census that fail to meet the criterion for good addresses for new construction, and all EDs in nonpermit-issuing areas are grouped into the area segment frame. Interviewers are then assigned to list these areas before a sample is drawn.
To the extent possible, an unclustered sample of units is selected within each PSU. This lack of clustering is desirable because the sample size of the Diary Survey is small relative to other surveys, while the intraclass correlations for expenditure characteristics are relatively large. This suggests that any clustering of the sample units could result in an unacceptable increase in the within-PSU variance and, as a result, the total variance.
The Interview Survey is a panel rotation survey. Each panel is interviewed for five consecutive quarters and then dropped from the survey. As one panel leaves the survey, a new panel is introduced. Approximately 20 percent of the addresses are new to the survey each month.

Weighting

Each CU included in the CE represents a given number of CUs in the U.S. population, which is considered to be the universe. The translation of sample families into the universe of families is known as weighting. However, since the unit of analysis for the CE is a CU, the weighting is performed at the CU level. Several factors are involved in determining the weight for each CU for which an interview is obtained. There are four steps in the weighting procedure:
1) The basic weight is assigned to an address and is the inverse of the probability of selection of the housing unit.
2) A weight control factor is applied to each interview if subsampling is performed in the field.
3) A noninterview adjustment is made for units where data could not be collected from occupied housing units. The adjustment is performed as a function of region, housing tenure, family size and race.
4) A final adjustment is performed to adjust the sample estimates to national population controls derived from the Current Population Survey. The adjustments are made based on both the CU's member composition and the CU as a whole. The weight for the CU is adjusted for individuals within the CU to meet the controls for 14 age/race categories, 4 regions, and 4 region/urban categories. The CU weight is also adjusted to meet the control for total number of CUs and total number of CUs who own their living quarters. The weighting procedure uses an iterative process to ensure that the sample estimates meet all the population controls.

Data Collection

Dates of Data Collection (YYYY/MM/DD)

Start date	End date
2008	2009

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Metadata production

Document ID

DDI_USA_2008_CES_IS_V01_M_BLS

Producers

Name	Abbreviation
International Labour organization	ILO

Date of Production

2014-05

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