Consumption Surveys and Poverty Numbers

How India measures household spending and poverty, why the 2017-18 survey was scrapped, and what the 2022-23 and 2023-24 surveys showed.

India measures poverty mainly through household consumption expenditure surveys.

The survey

The NSO’s Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) asks households what they spend on food and other items.

The 2017-18 survey

The 2017-18 survey results were not released. Leaked findings reportedly showed a fall in real consumption. The government cited data quality concerns and scrapped it, leaving a gap of over a decade since 2011-12.

New surveys

HCES 2022-23 and 2023-24 were released in 2024 and 2025.
They used new methods, like multiple visits and more items, making direct comparison with 2011-12 difficult.

What they showed

Rising real consumption.
A narrowing urban-rural gap.
Food’s share of spending falling.
The World Bank, using this data, estimated extreme poverty in India had fallen to around 5 percent in 2022-23.

The poverty line debate

India has no official poverty line since the Tendulkar (2009) and Rangarajan (2014) committees, so estimates rely on different lines.

The missing decade

For years, researchers couldn't know how poverty changed after 2011-12 because the 2017-18 survey was withheld, forcing them to use indirect estimates.

Thinking India publishes poverty numbers every year

Consumption surveys are infrequent, and one was scrapped.

Key takeaways

Poverty is measured using consumption surveys.
The 2017-18 survey was scrapped.
New surveys for 2022-23 and 2023-24 used new methods.
The World Bank estimated extreme poverty around 5 percent in 2022-23.