Posts
Estimates from National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data reveal that even though food has been a priority in the consumption basket of Indian households, its share has been declining.
On the other hand, the share of many non-food items is on the rise: in particular, education, along with health, durable goods, consumer services and conveyance.
We estimate that the household budget share of education increased from 2% to 7% between 1993-94 and 2011-12. Education has witnessed one of the fastest growth rates among different expenditure heads of Indian households.
While the overall consumer market has grown at 14.5% per annum in nominal terms over the last 5-6 years, spending on education rose by 21% per annum. And, it is not just the same people who are spending more on their children's education.
In 2004-05, 40% of rural and 57% of urban families said they were spending on education. The corresponding numbers jumped to 63% rural and 73% urban in the latest NSSO survey in 2009-10. A number of questions arise.
Is education in India becoming more expensive at all levels or is it only school-level education that is getting costlier? Or, is it higher studies that have been increasingly becoming more costly? Alternatively, do people nowadays willingly opt for educational institutes or courses that charge higher fees? In other words, is the scenario such that a large section of households today prefer private education that comes at a higher price over government's?
What is the annual expenditure by all Indian households on education? Different approaches yield three estimates. It has been common practice in most research approaches to inflate household consumption expenditure estimates from NSSO in order to make it comparable with private final consumption expenditure-domestic (PFCE-domestic), as published by India's National Accounts Statistics (NAS), so that the estimates are representative of the entire private domestic market.
Estimates of PFCE-domestic are significantly higher than household consumption expenditure estimated from the NSSO. This is because PFCE has a comparatively wider coverage that includes expenditure of institutions that deliver religious, educational and health services, houseless and institutional sections of the population, imputed rents on owner-occupied dwellings and price-cost margins on banking and insurance services, all of which are not considered under NSSO.
The 2004-05 consumption expenditure estimated by NSSO at the all-India level was 43.6% of PFCE-domestic, which dipped to 39.5% in 2009-10. Again, the extent of under-reporting varies for different items of consumption. Thus, different sets of estimates of consumer expenditure can be arrived at depending on how under-reporting is corrected in NSSO data set.
In this study, we have used estimates from NSSO after the percentage of under-coverage in NSSO, as against the NAS, has been aligned (as in 2004-05) for all years to ensure comparability over time.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/comments-analysis/why-large-section-of-indian-households-today-prefer-private-education-over-governments/articleshow/17866580.cms
0 comments:
Post a Comment