Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures
Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures

Author: Christopher D. Carroll

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-06-16

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 022612665X

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Robust and reliable measures of consumer expenditures are essential for analyzing aggregate economic activity and for measuring differences in household circumstances. Many countries, including the United States, are embarking on ambitious projects to redesign surveys of consumer expenditures, with the goal of better capturing economic heterogeneity. This is an appropriate time to examine the way consumer expenditures are currently measured, and the challenges and opportunities that alternative approaches might present. Improving the Measurement of Consumer Expenditures begins with a comprehensive review of current methodologies for collecting consumer expenditure data. Subsequent chapters highlight the range of different objectives that expenditure surveys may satisfy, compare the data available from consumer expenditure surveys with that available from other sources, and describe how the United States’s current survey practices compare with those in other nations.

Measuring What We Spend
Measuring What We Spend

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0309265789

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The Consumer Expenditure (CE) surveys are the only source of information on the complete range of consumers' expenditures and incomes in the United States, as well as the characteristics of those consumers. The CE consists of two separate surveys: (1) a national sample of households interviewed five times at three-month intervals; and (2) a separate national sample of households that complete two consecutive one-week expenditure diaries. For more than 40 years, these surveys, the responsibility of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), have been the principal source of knowledge about changing patterns of consumer spending in the U.S. population. In February 2009, BLS initiated the Gemini Project, the aim of which is to redesign the CE surveys to improve data quality through a verifiable reduction in measurement error with a particular focus on underreporting. The Gemini Project initiated a series of information-gathering meetings, conference sessions, forums, and workshops to identify appropriate strategies for improving CE data quality. As part of this effort, BLS requested the National Research Council's Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) to convene an expert panel to build on the Gemini Project by conducting further investigations and proposing redesign options for the CE surveys. The charge to the Panel on Redesigning the BLS Consumer Expenditure Surveys includes reviewing the output of a Gemini-convened data user needs forum and methods workshop and convening its own household survey producers workshop to obtain further input. In addition, the panel was tasked to commission options from contractors for consideration in recommending possible redesigns. The panel was further asked by BLS to create potential redesigns that would put a greater emphasis on proactive data collection to improve the measurement of consumer expenditures. Measuring What We Spend summarizes the deliberations and activities of the panel, discusses the conclusions about the uses of the CE surveys and why a redesign is needed, as well as recommendations for the future.

Consumer Spending by Older Americans
Consumer Spending by Older Americans

Author: Patrick J. Purcell

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13:

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The population of the United States is growing older. Because of the ageing of the population and the decline in income that occurs when people retire, both the amount and the composition of spending by American households could change substantially as the 76 million members of the baby boom generation reach retirement age. This book presents data on spending by Americans aged 55 and older collected by the U S Department of Labor through its Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES). From 1985 to 2005, the average annual expenditures of older Americans rose along with their incomes, and the distribution of spending among expenditure categories changed. These changes were the result of changing tastes and preferences among consumers and differences in the rates of price increase among various classes of goods and services.

Consumer Expenditures
Consumer Expenditures

Author: Stanley Lebergott

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 140086416X

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Changing consumer choices have built microchip factories where cotton fields used to be and have doomed cities from New Bedford to Detroit, while the impact of these choices on jobs and tax revenues has stimulated the creation of models of consumer behavior. Even finely tuned econometric models, however, have not served well as guides for policy choices, for they have relied chiefly on data for the Great Depression and the Cold War era or on biased budget surveys. Stanley Lebergott here provides the way to greater realism with new data for the entire twentieth century, including the decades of peacetime prosperity. The new measures also permit moving from the level of the nation to the state. Analyzing our interest in individual economic well-being, Lebergott argues that consumer expenditure provides a better guide than the usual data on money income before tax. He also challenges continued reliance on a single consumption function in macro models. In other essays he uses the new data to demonstrate that the supposed "flawed prosperity" of the 1920s was not responsible for the Great Depression; points out the limitations of the usual consumer budget surveys; and contrasts the role of age, nativity, and other factors in creating interstate differences. The new data, which link to the official BEA estimates, will provide raw material to test and extend theories of how the consumer and the economy function. Originally published in 1995. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.