An official website of the United States government
These prototype statistics measure the allocation of Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) across households, with the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) serving as the basis of the distributions. PCE estimates are produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) as a part of the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) and measure the value of goods and services purchased by, and on behalf of, US residents.
The PCE distributions are produced as a part of an OECD effort to produce distributional national account statistics based on microdata from households and other sources. We produce the PCE distributional results in conjunction with the BEA who produce distributions of personal income.
PCE distributional results for 2000–2022 (last updated December 9, 2024)
We create prototype distributional statistics for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE). PCE is allocated across consumer units using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE). For more detail about the methodology see the methodology summary. The December 2024 release includes several methodological improvements from prior versions that are outlined in the Summary of Methods Changes. We also introduce distributional PCE price indexes.
Summary of process for creating distribution of PCE using CE data:
In July 2024, the BEA and BLS jointly produced a new joint distribution of disposable personal income (DPI) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) which includes personal saving (PS). This work builds on the previously constructed independent distributions of DPI and PCE, produced by BEA and BLS, respectively. The distribution of DPI is based on household income data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS-ASEC), while the PCE component is from the CE as described above. A technical document and working paper contain additional details. A full set of available results is available on the the BEA website. These results are based on the July 2024 release of the PCE distributions.
Garner, T.I., Martin, R.S., Matsumoto, B. and Curtin, S. 2024 "A Distributional Approach to U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures: An Overview." Business Economics. Vol 59, Issue 3. - https://www.bls.gov/cex/a-distributional-approach-to-us-personal-consumption-expenditures-overview.pdf
Garner, T.I., Martin, R.S., Matsumoto, B. and Curtin, S. 2022 "Distribution of U.S. Personal Consumption Expenditures for 2019: A Prototype Based on Consumer Expenditure Survey Data." BLS Working Paper 557 - https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2022/pdf/ec220120.pdf.
Gindelsky, M., and Martin, R.S. 2024. “The Polarization of Personal Saving.” BLS Working Paper 575. https://www.bls.gov/osmr/research-papers/2024/pdf/ec240050.pdf
BEA – Distribution of personal income - https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/distribution-of-personal-income.
OECD – EG DNA - https://www.oecd.org/sdd/na/household-distributional-results-in-line-with-national-accounts-experimental-statistics.htm.
Curtin, S. The Impact of COVID-19 on CE Survey Estimates for 2020 - https://www.bls.gov/cex/research_papers/pdf/curtin-2020-annual-COVID-impact.pdf.
CE 2020 Annual Report - https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/consumer-expenditures/2020/home.htm.
Last Modified Date: December 9, 2024