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3 weeks ago
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ARTICLE AD BOX
Summary
For decades, India has used household spending—not earnings—as an input for analysis and policy formulation. Income is very difficult to measure accurately. But the ministry of statistics has a national survey in the works that promises to close a glaring gap.
For decades, India has relied on its household consumption expenditure as the primary measure of welfare, poverty and inequality. While it is still important, it could be supplemented with new approaches that capture certain aspects of a rapidly transforming economy driven by technology and services in which households may have increasingly diversified sources of income.
Accurate, disaggregated and timely information on household income can help answer key policy questions, such as the reach of welfare transfers, burden of taxation, drivers of inequality and the vulnerability of different groups. Access to such data can enable governments to navigate policy decisions with clarity, grounding debates in evidence and driving more effective outcomes.
India’s attempts to measure income are not new. In the early 1980s, the National Sample Survey Organization experimented with income modules, but these efforts were eventually discontinued on account of a few conceptual and operational challenges.
Yet, our economy has since changed fundamentally and so have the tools available for measurement.
A renewed effort through the upcoming Household Income Survey 2026 (HIS) reflects both the evolution of India’s statistical needs and the readiness of our system to take on this complex task.
To ensure conceptual and methodological integrity, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) constituted a technical expert group (TEG) comprising economists, survey methodologists, statisticians and practitioners with long experience in income measurement and related fields.
The group has been guiding the National Statistics Office (NSO) on the sampling design, questionnaire, architecture, operational protocols and piloting strategy to ensure that HIS 2026 benefits from both global best practices and India’s own learning curve.
Progress over the past year has been significant. The sampling design has been finalized, the core questionnaire has undergone iterative refinement and field protocols have been tested through structured pilots that have yielded encouraging results.
The NSO’s training and capacity building exercises are underway, aided by the digitalization of field processes and stronger supervisory systems. With full-scale fieldwork scheduled to begin shortly, HIS 2026 is on track and the first set of national findings is expected by September 2027, a timeline that will allow thorough processing, validation and dissemination of microdata.
Reliable income data is indispensable because it captures the actual flow of resources available to households. It is income, not consumption, that enables families to save, invest in education, purchase insurance, withstand volatility and plan for the future. Consumption often masks inequality because high-income households save more while low-income households consume nearly all that they earn.
Regular measurements of income and savings can, therefore, help policymakers accurately gauge financial fragility and design interventions that address the roots of economic insecurity.
Surveys like NCAER’s NSHIE 2005 and PRICE’s ICE 360 also reflect past efforts in India to collect income data, including in highly informal contexts. Through a combination of source-specific questions, valuation of in-kind receipts probing for irregular flows and cross-checks with expenditure and savings, these surveys have produced credible estimates that have been used in academic and research circles.
But such efforts, being outside the official system, were sporadic and lacked the institutional continuity needed for long-term comparability. HIS 2026 now offers us an opportunity to embed this capacity firmly within the national statistical architecture.
International experience strengthens the case for such a survey further. Countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa have institutionalized regular income surveys enabling real-time monitoring of inequality, labour market dynamics and welfare outcomes. Their examples show that consistency, periodicity and transparency are essential for building trust in official data.
For India, HIS 2026 can play a similar role by complementing the estimates derived from tax and national accounts, providing a richer and more comprehensive understanding of household income. An income survey can thus supplement administrative data to capture the full diversity of households and ensure inclusive representation, particularly in a country with a large informal sector.
Designing and implementing HIS 2026 will demand careful attention at every step, from stratified sampling that captures both the bottom and top of the distribution and source-specific modules that reduce under-reporting to valuation protocols for in-kind and home-produced income and recall periods aligned with the nature of each income flow.
Enumerators will require strong training and continuous supervision, while the survey will need robust internal consistency checks. Public confidence in the survey will depend on transparent dissemination, timely release of anonymized microdata, detailed documentation and a commitment to methodological clarity.
Anonymity safeguards, a hallmark of MoSPI’s data operations for the past seven decades, help create an environment where citizens can share information openly, contributing to the quality and reliability of survey data.
HIS 2026 represents a unique convergence of institutional readiness, technological maturity and policy urgency. India’s statistical system today has the digital tools, analytical capabilities and professional standards to execute a survey of this scale and complexity.
Not-for-profit institutions like NCAER and PRICE contribute methodological experimentation and field-tested insights. Together, they can help India build data infrastructure that improves policymaking and strengthens public accountability .
A nation that aspires to be a global economic leader cannot afford statistical blind spots. Income, the most crucial determinant of household well-being, should be captured better. HIS 2026 offers India a historic chance to count what truly matters and do it well.
For a country that’s reshaping its aspirations, a credible and enduring system of income measurement is not just a technical advancement, it is a democratic imperative.
These are the authors’ personal views.
The authors are, respectively, secretary, ministry of statistics and programme implementation; and managing director and CEO, PRICE.
English (US) ·