Consumption shift

Regular updates will better inform policy

The government last week released some findings from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey. The National Statistical Office conducted a broad survey on consumption in over 260,000 households between August 2022 and July 2023. This was the first such survey with findings that have been made public in over a decade. Although such a survey was indeed conducted in 2017-18, the results have not been made public owing to issues related to data quality. The comparisons with the decade-old figures have made some headlines. For example, the proportion of rural households’ expenditure that goes on food has dropped from 53 per