Number Theory: India’s consumption inequality in 3 charts

The release of the 2022-23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) will give much-needed information on the pattern of household consumption expenditure in India after more than a decade. As has been pointed out in these pages, a change in the survey design between the latest and previous surveys means caution has to observed while making comparisons. The academic debate on comparability or lack of it between the latest and previous surveys is expected to start once independent economists start using the HCES unit-level data to reach their own conclusions.