Consumer Expenditures In The United States: Survey Description And Distributional Analyses

Abstract

Household expenditure survey data can be used to provide information concerning the economic status and material well-being of families within and across countries. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to describe the survey which is conducted in the United States (U.S.) to collect these data, and second, to present results from recent studies in which these data have been used to examine the distribution of household expenditures. We hope this paper will stimulate greater interest among researchers internationally to examine household expenditure data when addressing distributional issues. The paper is divided into four sections. Section one provides a description of the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) and procedures. Section two includes results from analyses of the distribution of expenditures across households and the inequality in these expenditures. Section three discusses limitations of the CEX data. Section four is the summary and conclusions.