Geoffrey Paulin is a Senior Economist with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) program, which produces the most detailed source of expenditures, income, demographics, and assets and liabilities collected from households by the Federal government. In this role, he has published numerous articles; served as a frequent speaker at conferences and on college campuses to describe his research and promote the CE data; delivered workshops on how to access the data; held informal writers’ workshops in his office and with staff from BLS regional offices; and led teams involved in improving data quality, such as imputing income, when missing, to adjust for nonresponse.

His presentation will be “Introducing the Consumer Expenditure Survey: A Unique and Useful Tool for Analyzing Detailed Spending Patterns of U.S. Households”
and he will discuss:

· the Consumer Expenditure Survey data (what they are, how they are collected and published, etc.);

· examples of current research using the data;

· mechanisms under construction to improve data quality;

· how to obtain and use microdata from the program, two years of which (2010-11) are now available online for free download.