Analysis and Estimation of Consumer Expenditure assuming uniform prices across FSUs: A step towards cost effectiveness

TL;DR

This paper proposes a cost-effective method for estimating consumer expenditure distributions by assuming uniform prices across FSUs, showing minimal loss of information compared to traditional methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach assuming uniform prices within FSUs, reducing survey costs while maintaining estimation accuracy.

Findings

No significant loss in estimating expenditure distribution

Comparable Lorenz curve and Gini Index results

Cost reduction potential in survey methodology

Abstract

Analysis and estimation of consumer expenditure and budget shares are important for understanding quantitatively the expenditure based behaviour of the people of a country or region. The costs attached with performing consumer expenditure and budget shares survey are significant. These surveys are quite time consuming and even a slight increase in sample size could lead to a significant increase in the cost of the survey under the current structure. This high cost for the survey also reduces its flexibility. Hence it is of paramount importance to be able to provide a statistically sound and relatively cheaper facilitation method of survey to be able to understand the consumption expenditure distribution of a country or a region without much loss of inferential power. In the context of the Indian National Sample Survey, in this paper we perform analysis and estimation of consumer expenditure assuming uniform prices across First Stage Units (FSUs) of a sampling design, and check its feasibility in estimating the consumer expenditure distribution of the country. We also compare it with the existing methodology and infer that there is no significant loss of information in the estimated consumer expenditure distribution and other inferences like the Lorenz curve and the Gini Index, when uniform distribution of prices within any FSU is assumed.