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Missing the Poor, Big Time: A Critical Assessment of the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey

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  • Somanchi, Anmol

    (IDinsight)

Abstract

India’s statistical system is in bad shape with a near absence of regular publicly funded household surveys in recent years. All eyes have now turned to the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS), a panel survey of over 170,000 households, privately executed by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) since 2014. Given its breadth and high frequency, CPHS has become a widely referenced barometer of the Indan economy. Research papers using CPHS have also mushroomed. However, there has been little validation of the nature and quality of CPHS data. Most crucially, is it true that CPHS is an “all-India representative survey” as claimed by CMIE and echoed by multiple articles in prestigious journals? Comparing CPHS with various national surveys on a set of key demographic and economic indicators, this paper argues that, far from being nationally representative, CPHS under-represents women and young children, over-represents well-educated households and under-represents the poor. A possible source for these biases (among others) is the strange, unorthodox sampling design adopted by CMIE, which differs from standard sampling approaches on various counts. Further, the bias in the CPHS sample appears to be growing in recent years, posing a serious challenge when using the data to study trends over time

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  • Somanchi, Anmol, 2021. "Missing the Poor, Big Time: A Critical Assessment of the Consumer Pyramids Household Survey," SocArXiv qmce9, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:qmce9
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/qmce9
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    1. Chao, Li-Wei & Szrek, Helena & Peltzer, Karl & Ramlagan, Shandir & Fleming, Peter & Leite, Rui & Magerman, Jesswill & Ngwenya, Godfrey B. & Sousa Pereira, Nuno & Behrman, Jere, 2012. "A comparison of EPI sampling, probability sampling, and compact segment sampling methods for micro and small enterprises," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 94-107.
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    3. Swati Dhingra & Fjolla Kondirolli, 2021. "City of dreams no more, a year on: worklessness and active labour market policies in urban India," CEP Covid-19 Analyses cepcovid-19-022, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    4. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich & Gita Gopinath & Prachi Mishra & Abhinav Narayanan, 2020. "Cash and the Economy: Evidence from India’s Demonetization," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(1), pages 57-103.
    5. Amartya Lahiri, 2020. "The Great Indian Demonetization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(1), pages 55-74, Winter.
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    Cited by:

    1. Arpit Gupta & Anup Malani & Bartosz Woda, 2021. "Inequality in India Declined During COVID," NBER Working Papers 29597, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Chanda, Areendam & Cook, C. Justin, 2022. "Was India’s demonetization redistributive? Insights from satellites and surveys," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Swati Dhingra & Fjolla Kondirolli, 2023. "Jobless and Stuck: Youth Unemployment and COVID-19 in India," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 71(3), pages 580-610, September.
    4. Farzana Afridi & Kanika Mahajan & Nikita Sangwan, 2022. "Employment Guaranteed? Social Protection During a Pandemic," Oxford Open Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 1, pages 1-15.
    5. Rosa Abraham & Anand Shrivastava, 2022. "How Comparable are India’s Labour Market Surveys?," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 65(2), pages 321-346, June.
    6. Mrinalini Jha & Amit Basole, 2023. "Labour Incomes in India: A Comparison of Two National Household Surveys," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 66(1), pages 181-201, March.
    7. Sinha Roy,Sutirtha & Van Der Weide,Roy, 2022. "Poverty in India Has Declined over the Last Decade But Not As Much As Previously Thought," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9994, The World Bank.

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