User:Mldenn/EFS

Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS)

The Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS) is a survey conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) which collects data about private household expenditure and food consumption in Great Britain.

History
From 1957 until March 2001, two different surveys were conducted each year to gather information on household expenditure and food consumption: the Family Expenditure Survey, FES, and the National Food Survey, NFS. These two surveys were combined from April 2001 in the Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS) which completely replaced both former survey series. The EFS is conducted by ONS, which has overall project management and financial responsibility for the EFS, while DEFRA provides the food consumption data.

The design of the EFS is based on that of the former FES, though there have been some changes, notably the introduction of the European Standard Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) in place of the unique expernditure codes formerly used in the FES and NFS. The use of a new processing software for the EFS SPSS has also affected the structure of the datasets.

Additionally, the EFS changed from a financial year-based to a calendar year-based system in 2006 and is soon to be incorporated into the Integrated Household Survey (IHS).

Methodology and scope
The survey comprises a comprehensive household questionnaire covering both one-time purchases and regular payments made by the household in the survey reference period, and an income questionnaire that collects detailed information about the income of each adult member of the household. In addition to the two questionnaires, each individual aged 16 years and over in the household is asked to keep diary records of daily expenditure for two weeks.

Survey results
The data collected in the EFS is multi-purpose but it is primarily used for the Retail Prices Index, National Accounts estimates of household expenditure, and the analysis of the effect of taxes and benefits and trends in nutrition.

Re-using the data
Users can obtain EFS data from the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) website (registration is required).