The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) is conducted for the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CE is important because it is the only Federal survey to provide information on the complete range of consumers’ expenditures and incomes, as well as the characteristics of those consumers. It studies the expenditures, income, and household characteristics of American consumers. The CE is often used in wrongful death cases to estimate a personal consumption factor.
The personal consumption factor is the amount of income the decedent would have spent on personal expenditures as opposed to income going to the household or other members of the household. Personal consumption includes expenditures on food, clothing, alcohol, transportation, etc. This factor is generally estimated using the expenditure data from CE and regression analysis.
For more information, see http://www.bls.gov/cex.
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