13th Quarterly Survey of Households completed

Estimations for quarter and year ended March 2012 to become available on 12 July

The 13th quarterly survey of households for the Consumer Pyramids service was completed on 30th June 2012. The survey had commenced field operations in early April 2012. During April, May and June 2012, the survey sought answers to questions regarding the income, expenditure, borrowings and savings of households of India during the months of January, February and March 2012.

This survey is called the March 2012 survey since it captures data for the quarter ended March 2012.

Out of the total frame of 155,649 households, 143,131 households responded with valid information during this period. Responding households have been very close to 143 thousand households since the March 2011 survey.

The survey was conducted satisfactorily throughout the country except some parts of Assam where the survey was affected because of law and order problems. The survey was also impacted partly in Bihar.

The completion of this survey leads to the estimation of the income, expenses, pattern of expenses by expense item-heads, borrower households, sources and uses of borrowings, investor households and the pattern of investments of households, and ownership of assets.

It also leads to the estimation of the proportion of households by age, gender, occupation, literacy, levels of education, financial inclusion and mobile connectivity of the people of India. These estimations are derived from such characteristics seen in the over 700 thousand individuals residing in the 143 thousand households surveyed.

The completion of this survey also leads to similar estimations for the year ended March 2012.

All these estimations - available through 4.4 million presentations - will become available on Consumer Pyramids on 12 July 2012.

With this Consumer Pyramids now offers data for 12 quarters from June 2009 through March 2012, and for three years 2009-10 through 2011-12. This is the maximum time-series available on Consumer Pyramids. In all subsequent Consumer Pyramids updates, the oldest quarterly and annual estimates would be removed.