Text Table 9. Comparison of aggregate expenditures for food, Consumer Expenditure Diary Survey, Personal Consumption Ex-
penditures (PCE), Supermarket Business, and Progressive Grocer, 1991

| Diary survey Ratio of Ratio of Ratio of
aggregate Diary to Diary to Diary to
Food categories nditures PCE Supermarket Progressive

| {in billions) Business Grocer
Food at home, total .............5 $255 | 0.74 1.10 1.22
Cereals and cereal products . 4 | 69 1.09 1.43
Bakery products .... 25 66 1.06 | 4.12
Meat including poultry | 58 83 107 | 1.07
Fish and seafood 8 1.20 1.19 2.68
Eggs ...... 3 117 2.04 1.44
Fresh milk and 13 1.01 1.74 1.86
Other dairy products 16 76 1.38 4.92
Fresh fruits and vegetables 25 92 73 | 92
Processed fruits and vegetables 16 59 1.06 | 1.37
‘Sugar and other sweets . 10 37 19200 | 2.48
Fats andoils .......... 7 76 1.09 1.74
Nonalcoholic beverages .... 2 | 53 1.02 1.20
Miscellaneous prepared foods . . 37 8} 1.28 1.16

J

Source: BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey; Supermarket Business, Consumer Expenditure Study (September 1991); and Progressive Grocer (July 1991).

Detailed food comparisons. Supermarket Business con-
ducts a comprehensive annual survey of food manufactur-
ers, packers, wholesalers, and retailers to construct a de-
tailed picture of grocery store sales by product line. Total
grocery store sales for the study are based on U.S. Bureau
of the Census estimates, and include sales by specialty food
stores. Estimates are also available annually from a similar
study by Progressive Grocer. The Progressive Grocer data
are limited to stores with annual food sales of $2 million or
more, accounting for only 75 to 80 percent of grocery store
food sales.

Text table 9 compares the industry data, as well as PCE
data, with detailed CE Diary survey estimates of food ex-
penditures. These comparisons show that the estimates for
1991 CE food at home expenditures are generally lower
than PCE but that the CE estimates are almost always
higher than those of Supermarket Business and Progressive
Grocer. In the case of the Progressive Grocer estimates, this
is due in part to the truncated store sample, as noted above.
The results shown in text table 9 for 1991 are, in general,
similar to those from previous years.

Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The Energy In-
formation Administration of the U.S. Department of En-
ergy (DOE) publishes data collected in the Residential En-
ergy Consumption Survey (RECS) on expenditures for
electricity, natural gas, fuel oil and kerosene, and liquified
petroleum gas. The data are published triennially. The
RECS focuses on obtaining detailed data from energy
suppliers on residential energy use. To make the compari-
son, time periods and fuel types were matched to the extent
possible. Fuel oil and kerosene are not compared because
of differences in how the items are categorized and the in-
clusion of expenditures for wood fuel in RECS.

The data in text table 10 show aggregate expenditures
and ratios from the two surveys for periods back to 1984.
Some difference between the CE survey and RECS is to be

expected because imputations are made in the DOE sur-
veys for money value of utilities included in residential
rents. In addition, the RECS covers military households
who live on base, but the CE survey does not include such
households. The 1990 data show that consumer expendi-
ture estimates for natural gas and electricity combined are
very close to those from the Energy Department survey.
The consumer expenditure estimate for electricity expen-
ditures, which is 3 percent higher than the RECS estimate,
more than offset the lower expenditure amount for natural
gas.

National Health Accounts. The Health Care Financing
Administration (HCFA) of the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services publishes total aggregate
health costs of the United States in the National Health
Accounts (NHA). Total health care costs include pay-
ments from all sources, public and private. The CE survey
data are compared with the out-of-pocket expenditures in
the NHA. Out-of-pocket expenditures for health care in-
clude copayment and deductible amounts required by
third party payers (governments, commercial insurance
companies, and other nonhousehold sources) and medical
care services and products not covered by third parties. To
derive the out-of-pocket estimates, HCFA uses CE data
along with data from administrative and industry sources.
For the comparisons, estimates of insurance premiums are
based on detailed data in NHA on the financing of health
care.
Text table 11 shows a comparison of aggregate out-of-
pocket health care expenditures from the CE survey and
NHA. Expenditures by patients in nursing homes, which
are not covered in the CE survey, are excluded from the
comparison. Because of methodological changes in NHA,
ratios in the comparison below should not be compared
with those published in earlier bulletins.

As reported in the CE survey, aggregate health care ex-
penditures were $150 billion in 1991, or about 73 percent