Consumer Expenditure Surveys

Consumer expenditure surveys (CES), or family expenditure surveys (FES) as they had been called in Britain until recently, are studies that primarily aim to collect data related to household expenditures for goods and services used in everyday life. The British former FES was taken over by the Expenditure and Food Survey, at the merger with National Food Survey in 2001, and was renamed the Living Costs and Food Survey in 2008. These U.S. and U.K. surveys and their equivalents in other countries are conducted by the statistical departments of the central governments and provide information on household incomes and expenditures, as well as demographic and economic characteristics of household members. The collected data are used to calculate, in official terms, the weights for an index ...