Budget, Expenditure and Consumption Surveys in Developing Countries: What, Why and How

Excerpts from the Foreword: The development of better methods for determining in advance the probable impacts that various economic policy choices will have on people's food consumption patterns and nutrient intakes will be one of the major outputs of the "Consumption Effects of Agricultural Policies" (CEAP) project. This project was initiated in FY80 by the Office of Nutrition, Bureau of Science and Technology as a major element of AID's strategy to help meet the basic needs of the poor and to improve the quality of life in the developing countries. The specific purpose of the project is to encourage developing countries to develop national agricultural planning systems which are conducive to improved national levels of consumption and nutrition. The budget, expenditure and consumption surveys which are discussed in this paper, written when Emmy Simmons was a member of the Nutrition Economics Group, represent a major source of information on household incomes and/or total expenditures and their expenditures on food and/or quantities of food consumed. The paper is designed to brief the non-technical person on the basic nature of these surveys, the reasons why they are undertaken and the design options available to those responsible for such surveys. Examples of how such data can be analyzed are listed in Appendix A. Several basic texts which describe the theoretical underpinnings for such analyses are listed in Appendix B, and several compendiums of budget, expenditure and consumption surveys are listed in Appendix C.