Author: Christopher D. Carroll
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015-06-16
Total Pages: 517
ISBN-13: 022612665X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2013-02-15
Total Pages: 217
ISBN-13: 0309265789
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: Patrick J. Purcell
Publisher:
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 100
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: Margaret Ambry
Publisher: Greenwood
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 486
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Lizabeth Cohen
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2008-12-24
Total Pages: 578
ISBN-13: 0307555364
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life. Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.