Household Consumer Expenditure, Jan - June 1998
NSS 54th Round

India, 1998

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Reference ID

DDI-IND-MOSPI-NSSO-54Rnd-Sch1.0-1998

Producer(s)

National Sample Survey Office

Collections

Household Consumption Expenditure

Metadata

DDI/XML JSON

Created on

Jan 17, 2018

Last modified

Apr 07, 2026

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266990

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No. of Meals per day (B4_q15)

Data file: Block 4_Person records

Overview

Valid: 134335

Invalid: 0

Minimum: 0.0

Maximum: 3.0

Mean: 2.465284549819481

Standard deviation: 0.5412671869119526

Type: Discrete

Width: 1

Format: Numeric

Questions and instructions

Literal question

How many meals does the household usually take every day?

Categories

Value	Cases
0	973	0.7%
1	48	0%
2	68816	51.2%
3	64498	48%

Warning: these figures indicate the number of cases found in the data file. They cannot be interpreted as summary statistics of the population of interest.

Interviewer instructions

The number of meals consumed by a person is usually reported as 2 or 3. In rare cases, one may come across a person who may be taking food only once in a day or more than three times a day. While in the former case the number of meals for the person will be 1 per day, in the latter case, however, only 3 should be entered. That is, in this column, the recorded number of meals taken in a day, even if it is reported to be higher, should not exceed 3. A breast-fed baby does not directly share the food consumed by members of the household. Hence for such babies the entry in this column will be '0'.

Description

Definition

Meal
A 'Meal' is composed of one of more readily cat able (generally cooked) items of food, the usual major constituent of which is cereal food. The meals consumed by a person twice or thrice a day provide him/her the required energy of (calorie) and other nutrients for living and for pursuing his/her normal avocations. A 'meal' as opposed to 'snacks ' as opposed to 'snacks', 'nasta' or 'high tea' , contains larger quantum and variety of food. In rare cases, a full meal may contain larger quantity of non-cereal food. Even that, if the total quantum of food in plate is heavy as a meal, the contents of the food plate will also be considered as a real. Sometimes the contents of a 'nasta' may not be very different from the contents of a 'meal'. The difference in quantity will there be the guiding factor for deciding whether the plate is to be led as a 'meal ' or a nasta.

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Household Consumer Expenditure, Jan - June 1998 NSS 54th Round