Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)
This organization offers a substantial amount of social science
data in machine readable form to its more than 600 colleges,
universities, and institutions (data is available to individuals
whose institutions are not members of the ICPSR). All their data is
available on-line, and soon researchers at ICPSR institutions will
be able to access it directly. Some data is available to non-ICPSR
members.
In the section of the archive titled "Economic Behavior,
Attitudes" you will find the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the
Survey of Consumer Finances. Other data of possible interest (in
other sections) includes the World Bank's World Tables of Economic
and Social Indicators, 1950-1988; the NBER's Macroeconomic Time
Series for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France
(which has 1.6 million entries in numerous categories including
regional data; most data is from the early part of the 20th century,
but a substantial amount is from the 19th century; the most recent
is from 1968); and United States Microdata Samples Extract File,
1940-1980: Demographics of Aging (which is an extract of the
Censuses of 1960, 1970, and 1980). In addition, there is a
substantial amount of more specialized data of likely interest to
economists.
For economists, an especially useful collection of data is Class
V, which contains data funded by the NSF's Economics Division.
This data is in the "Publication-Related Archive" section of the
archive. This material is available to all.
The Consumer Expenditures Survey and the Current Population Survey
are available through their "FastTrack Service" (which makes data
available before their usual testing and checking). Information on
FastTrack datasets is available from their comprehensive list of
resources on their main web page. The data itself is available on
their ftp site in the "pub/FastTrack" directory. This material is
available to all.
To obtain most data from ICPSR, you generally must contact your
local representative, assuming that your university or college is
a member of the ICPSR.
http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/