ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Economic Characterization of Low Income Families in the City of Sao Paulo Using Electricity Consumption As a Predictive Variable Eduardo Francisco, FGV, Brazil Eric Cohen, Ibmec, Brazil Felipe Zambaldi, UMESP, Brazil Francisco Aranha, FGV, Brazil This study examines the relationship between energy consumption and family income in the city of Sao Paulo, with 384 low income households sampled in a field survey in 2005. Using decision trees and multiple regression, the energy consumption was tested as a variable to complement Brazil’s Criterion for Economic Classification to predict family purchasing power. The combined used of the Criterion, the electric bill amount, and the number of bedrooms shows an improvement from 0.222 to 0.300 in the explanatory power of the model, which may be useful to retailers, government planners and financial agents in understanding socio-economic characteristics. [to cite]: Eduardo Francisco, Eric Cohen, Felipe Zambaldi, and Francisco Aranha (2008) ,"Economic Characterization of Low Income Families in the City of Sao Paulo Using Electricity Consumption As a Predictive Variable", in LA - Latin American Advances in Consumer Research Volume 2, eds. Claudia R. Acevedo, Jose Mauro C. Hernandez, and Tina M. Lowrey, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 219-221. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/14087/la/v2_pdf/LA-02 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.