A new round of the Household Expenditure Survey (HES) has been launched in mid-September 2019 to collect up-to-date information on the expenditure patterns of households in Hong Kong. The information will be mainly used for updating the expenditure weights of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) series.
The Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) conducts an HES once every 5 years. The survey will be conducted continuously to collect data for a whole year in order to capture all seasonal variations in household expenditure patterns.
A sample of about 13 000 living quarters has been selected for the survey under a scientifically designed sampling scheme. The one-year survey period is broken down into 26 cycles, with each cycle comprising two weeks. Each household in the sample will be invited to take part in one cycle and requested to keep expenditure diaries for the specified 14 days.
Prior to the conduct of the main survey, a pre-test was carried out in mid-2019 to test the survey design, work flows and various aspects of survey operations.
About 3 weeks before commencement of each survey cycle, letters will be issued to the sampled living quarters inviting the households there to participate in the survey. The households can:
Interviewers, whose names are shown on the invitation letters, will visit households in the selected living quarters, who have not completed the questionnaire online, 2 weeks after despatch of the letter to explain the purposes and data requirements of the survey. Each interviewer will carry a staff identity card and a certificate issued by C&SD authorising him/her to conduct the survey. Householders should check carefully the identity of the interviewer before admitting him/her to their premises.
The questionnaire used in the HES is designed in the form of an expenditure diary. A household member will need to spend a few minutes a day in recording his/her expenditures in the diary.
The 2019/20 HES is conducted under Part IIIA of the Census and Statistics Ordinance (Cap. 316). Information collected in this survey which may enable identification of individual households will be kept in strict confidence. The information collected will be used strictly for statistical purposes only.
The results of the HES are essential for the compilation of the CPI series. The CPI is an important economic indicator which measures changes in the price level of consumer goods and services generally purchased by households.
The current CPI series are compiled based on the expenditure patterns obtained from the 2014/15 HES. The results of the 2019/20 HES, which will be available around mid-2021, will be used to update the expenditure weights of the CPIs.
Major results of the 2019/20 HES and the 2019/20-based CPIs will be released to the public around mid-2021. For statistics on household expenditures, please visit https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/so290.jsp.
For enquiries about the 2019/20 HES, please contact the Household Expenditure Survey Section of the C&SD at telephone number 3188 2107 or email address hesurvey@censtatd.gov.hk.