India - Household Consumer Expenditure, Jan - June 2004, NSS 60th Round

A group of persons normally living together and taking food from a common kitchen constitutes a household. The word "normally" means that temporary visitors are excluded but temporary stay-aways are included. Thus a son or daughter residing in a hostel for studies is excluded from the household of his/her parents, but a resident employee or resident domestic servant or paying guest (but not just a tenant in the house) is included in the employer/host's household. "Living together" is usually given more importance than "sharing food from a common kitchen" in drawing the boundaries of a household in case the two criteria are in conflict; however, in the special case of a person taking food with his family but sleeping elsewhere (say in a shop or a different house) due to space shortage, the household formed by such a person's family members is taken to include the person also. Each inmate of a mess, hotel, boarding and lodging house, hostel, etc. is considered as a single-member household except that a family living in a hotel (say) is considered as one household only; the same applies to residential staff of such establishments.

The size of the sample household i.e., the total number of persons normally residing together (i.e., under the same roof) and taking food from the same kitchen (including temporary stayaways and excluding temporary visitors) will be recorded against this item. This number will be same as the last serial number recorded in column 1 of block 4.