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Bureau of Labor Statistics > Consumer Expenditure Survey > Methods > Distribution of Personal Consumption Expenditures

Distribution of Personal Consumption Expenditures

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. It represents research produced by the BLS Division of Price and Index Number Research in coordination with the CE Program.^[1] 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.

Results

PCE distributional results for 2000–2023 (last updated March 14, 2025)

Methodology overview

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 included several methodological improvements from prior versions that are outlined in the Summary of Methods Changes. We also introduced distributional PCE price indexes.

Summary of process for creating distribution of PCE using CE data:

Map CE to PCE product categories – The product categories in the CE (called UCCs) are mapped to the corresponding categories in the PCE. Note, owner-occupied housing is measured using reported rental equivalence values. Note, this mapping differs from the one the CE division maintains for routine CE-PCE comparisons in that we source more expenditures from the Interview survey.
Match CE Diary to Interview – The CE collects spending data in separate surveys. Most spending is captured by the Interview survey, but some expenditures are only captured in the Diary survey. Surveyed households do not complete both, so Diary survey values have to be imputed to the Interview survey participants to get total spending at the consumer unit level.
Impute expenditures to the CE – CE only captures out of pocket expenditures on categories like health insurance, medical goods and services, and financial services, while the PCE includes all expenditures on behalf of the household.
Upper tail adjustment –We also apply a Pareto adjustment to the top 5% of the total spending distribution due to the expectation of underreporting of spending at the top of the distribution.
Scale CE estimates to match PCE – Aggregate spending in the CE by category does not match the spending totals in PCE. In this step, we allocate the PCE spending unaccounted for in CE proportionally to the observed CE spending for 150 categories.
Create adult-equivalized PCE and compute deciles and other statistics – For distributional statistics, households are ranked according to their equivalized consumer unit expenditures where the equivalence scale is the square root of consumer unit size.

Joint Distribution of Disposable Personal Income and Personal Consumption Expenditure

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.

Resources

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. 2025. “The Polarization of Personal Saving.” Review of Income and Wealth. https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.70004

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.

Notes

[1] This research is conducted in support of DOL Strategic Objective 4.1 to "Provide timely, accurate, and relevant information on labor market activity, working conditions, price changes, and productivity in the U.S. economy," and the BLS FY 2025 Agency Management Plan Themes 2 (Valued and Trusted Data) and 3 (Source Data Innovation).

Last Modified Date: March 14, 2025