Why doesn t the Bureau of Labor Statistics publish more detailed expenditures?
Average expenditures on items at finer levels of detail might not be as reliable as those published for more aggregate levels because there are sometimes few reports of expenditures on more detailed items. A small number of unusually large purchases of infrequently reported items or an increase in the number of consumers reporting such expenditures might cause a large change in the average expenditure from one period to the next. The tables published in the two-year reports, and on the Consumer Expenditure Survey Web site, show the expenditure component level at which the estimates are considered to be reliable. However, even in those tables, data in some cells are footnoted as being likely to have large sampling errors due to the scarcity of reports.
