NSSO to carry out education, health survey from January 2014

CHANDIGARH: The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) will carry out a nationwide education and health survey starting from January next year, which will throw light on the extent of households' expenditure on health and their level of participation in education.

"The health and education survey will start from January next year and it will go up till July. Then it will take nine months from July for processing of data and then report will be ready," National Statistical Commission, Chairman Pronab Sen said on the sidelines of two-day 71st round of All India Training of Trainers that held here today.

"In case of health survey, which will be undertaken from next year, it will help understand the extent to which people are getting ill...how much expenditure people are making on treatment...it will also help in understanding the pattern of diseases especially when last such survey was undertaken 11 years ago," he said.

"The survey will also help policymakers to estimate the contribution of health to economy," Chief Statistician and Secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, TCA Anant said in his address.

"The education survey will also help in revealing whether the participation of households in education is increasing," said Anant.

A total sample of 1.2 lakh households will be taken for carrying out education and health surveys across the country, said Sen.

Asked about controversial data on poverty benchmarks, Sen while rejecting "anything wrong" in the method of data collection said, "there is a problem in definition (of poverty). Once you have defined poor at one rate...our data only says how many people earn less than that particular rate. People question only rate...we provide only data. How do you use it is up to you. It is not our job how should be using the data."

The Centre had come under fire from several quarters for poverty figures which had been capped at Rs 27 a day for rural India and Rs 33 for urban areas.

Last year, the Planning Commission faced severe criticism when it said that anyone who spent more than Rs 32 per day in urban areas is not poor.