Amy's Robot

What do people in big

What do people in big cities spend their money on? The Bureau of Labor statistics researched the question for 2 years, and issued a report, which the Times summarizes. NY'ers buy steak, Bostonians buy cigars, and San Franciscans buy books. I'll track down the full report later. Meantime, there's a graphic accompanying the NYT article that explains. -adm

Well, our colleagues over at Rungu already have contacted both the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Times reporter who wrote this article, in search of the source material, to no avail. The Times reporter says she just got some tables faxed to her from the NY office of the BLS. Nobody can find anything substantive on the BLS website, which is understandable if you look at it. -amy

Update: You can find a lot of related info at the BLS Consumer Expenditure site -- including this report [pdf], which is not broken down by city -- but the specific report referenced in the article doesn't seem to be online. However, if you scroll way down to the bottom, you'll see you can access the actual BLS database on the topic, so you can write your own report and fax it to the Times. -adm

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posted by adm at 10:48 AM | #