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Bureau of Labor Statistics > Consumer Expenditure Survey > Methods

PUMD ERRATA – 2004 Data

Consumer Expenditure Public-Use Microdata
October 18th, 2006
Updated: January 10th, 2014

To users of the 2004 Consumer Expenditure Public Use Microdata Files:

An error was discovered with the 2004 Public Use Microdata which has been corrected. A new release of the 2004 Public Use Microdata CD-ROM will be sent upon request to all users who have received the original release of the 2004 data.

To request a new-release version of the 2004 data, please contact the Consumer Expenditure Survey at:

Phone – (202) 691- 6900
Email – cexinfo@bls.gov

All subsequent orders from this date, October 18, 2006, will automatically receive the new release of data.

A description of the correction appears below:

An error was discovered in the transfer of interview survey data to BLS in Washington, DC. Not all loan records in the MOR and HEL Interview files were loaded into the datasets for 2004Q4 and 2005Q1. As a result, 535 mortgage records were omitted from the public use MOR file and 1 home equity loan record was omitted from the public use HEL file.

To correct this error, the omitted loan records were added to the public use MOR and HEL files. Since entire records were added, all variables in MOR and HEL were affected. Furthermore, the addition of records to these two EXPN expenditure files necessitated the addition of mapped expenditure records into MTAB and the recomputation of the Summary Expenditure Variables in the FMLY file. A list of affected MTAB UCCs appears in table 1 and a list of affected Summary Expenditure Variables appears in table 2. The addition of records to MOR and HEL also changed the CUTENURE status in FMLI044 and FMLI051 for a small number of NEWIDs.

In addition, since expenditure information is used in the income imputation process, all imputed income information for the affected consumer units were updated. This affects a total of 502 CUs (249 NEWIDs in 2004Q4 and 253 NEWIDs in 2005Q1). (Some of the 535 added records are from Consumer Units with multiple properties or more than one loan per property). Please note that only the BLS imputed income is changed. The CU reported income remains the same as in the original release (unless topcoded). A list of files and their associated income variables/UCCs appears in tables 3, 4 and 5. The changes to FINCBTXM for these affected NEWIDs also changed their INCLASS value and their income rankings (INC_RNK1 – INC_RNK5, and INC_RNKM).

All variables and UCCs on the CD were re-topcoded, to reflect the addition of the MOR/HEL records.