Description: The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) program consists of the Quarterly Interview Survey and the Diary Survey. Both surveys provide information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit (families and single consumers) characteristics. The survey data are collected for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Population: Nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized, U.S. population. Sampling frame generated from 2000 Census 100-Percent Detail File. Approximately 7,000 interviews and 7,000 diaries are collected from consumer units (120,770,000 in 2008; consumer unit = all members of a household related by blood, marriage, or other legal).

Periodicity: Data available for 1984-2017 and collected annually.

Additional relevant topics covered in this dataset: consumer expenditures

(Information adapted from the publisher)

For more information, please see the Compendium of Family-Self Sufficiency Databases.