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Consumer Expenditure Surveys

Public-Use Microdata (PUMD)

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) collects data on expenditures, income, and demographics in the United States. The public-use microdata (PUMD) files provide this information for individual respondents without any information that could identify respondents. PUMD files include adjustments for information that is missing because respondents were unwilling or unable to provide it. The files also have been adjusted to reduce the likelihood of identifying respondents, either directly or through inference.

This format allows researchers to analyze expenditures, income, and demographic trends beyond what the published tables show. However, users of the PUMD files should have strong skills with statistical software. To learn more, you may want to explore the PUMD methodology with the CE PUMD Getting Started Guide and check the availability of data with the Dictionary for Interview and Diary Surveys (XLSX).

The 2018 PUMD were released on September 10, 2019.

Note: To users of the CE 2017 Public-use Microdata: some corrected files have been reissued on June 27, 2019. See Errata notice for details.

Experimental State Weights for 2018, supporting state-level analysis for selected states, are also available with their documentation.

To be notified when new datasets become available, please sign up for the CEX e-mail updates. If you have comments, suggestions, and questions about this page and its contents, please contact us.

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Last Modified Date: February 20, 2020