Consumption Symposium (Day 1): Wednesday, September 22, 2021

This free, BLS-sponsored Consumption Symposium featured presentations from outside researchers and BLS staff. The symposium explored how BLS can produce a holistic consumption measure at the “consumer unit” level. The Consumer Expenditure Surveys already track consumer expenditures, but additional data and methods for measuring non-market consumption- namely, home production, in-kind benefits, and flow of services from durables-are needed to produce a more complete measure of consumption. This symposium shed light on the challenges of measuring consumption broadly at the consumer unit level and ways to overcome those challenges through the integration of different data sources and imputation methods.
Day 1 featured a panel discussion providing an international perspective on the concepts and challenges surrounding the development of a consumption measure. This discussion was followed by a session highlighting traditional and nontraditional approaches to measuring consumption. Day 1 concluded with a session focused on methods for incorporating durable goods in a consumption measure.