Expenditures of the aged.

Policymakers and researchers are concerned about the adequacy of economic resources of the aged. Income tells part of the story with regard to adequacy, but it is also useful to seek out other measures of standards of living, such as expenditures. To improve the availability of statistics on expenditures of the aged, the Social Security Administration produced the Expenditures of the Aged Chartbook. The chartbook is based on data from the 2002 Consumer Expenditure Survey Public-Use File, sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both total expenditures and components of expenditures are examined to give policymakers and researchers a more comprehensive understanding of the expenditures of the aged. This article includes a short overview of existing research on the expenditures of the aged and examples of charts from the chartbook. The contents of the chartbook are displayed in Box 1. The chartbook is available on the Offi ce of Policy Web site at http://www.socialsecurity. gov/policy.