India - Household Consumer Expenditure, July 1993 - June 1994, NSS 50th Round

The size of the household i.e. the total number of members normally residing together in the household surveyed have been recorded here.

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.