Welcome back, future Indian Statistical Service (ISS) officers!
In our previous session, Part 12: Vital Statistics, we decoded how the Office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI) tracks the continuous cycle of births and deaths through the Civil Registration System (CRS) and the Sample Registration System (SRS). We learned the formulas for Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR).
But here is a deeper question for a policymaker: Simply surviving birth is not enough. What is the quality of life of that surviving population? Are the children stunted or malnourished? Do women have access to proper maternal healthcare? Are our children going to well-equipped schools, and are they pursuing higher education?
To answer these questions, we rely on Social Statistics, which forms the very core of human development. Today, we are going to explore the massive surveys and administrative databases that track India’s health and education: The National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the U-DISE+, and MoSPI’s own socio-economic rounds.
For your UPSC ISS written exams and interviews, this blog contains an absolute “Goldmine” concept—the De Facto vs De Jure population debate in NFHS. Let us dive in!
1. The Health Pulse – National Family Health Survey (NFHS)
When we talk about tracking malnutrition, anaemia, maternal health, and family planning in India, one survey reigns supreme: The National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
Unlike the surveys we discussed in Module 2 (which were conducted by MoSPI), the NFHS is NOT conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO).
- The Nodal Agency: The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) has designated the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Mumbai, as the nodal agency responsible for providing coordination and technical guidance for the survey.
- Funding: It is a massive, multi-round survey funded by the Government of India alongside international agencies like USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, and UNFPA.
- History: So far, five rounds of NFHS have been successfully conducted: NFHS-1 (1992-93), NFHS-2 (1998-99), NFHS-3 (2005-06), NFHS-4 (2014-15), and the recently concluded NFHS-5 (2019-21).
The Sampling Design (Crucial for ISS Exams)
As an ISS aspirant, you must know how IIPS selects the households. The NFHS-5 sample is a stratified two-stage sample.
- Sampling Frame: The 2011 Population Census served as the sampling frame for the selection of Primary Sampling Units (PSUs).
- First Stage (PSUs): The PSUs are Villages in rural areas and Census Enumeration Blocks (CEBs) in urban areas. Within each rural stratum, villages are selected with Probability Proportional to Size (PPS).
- Second Stage (Households): In every selected rural and urban cluster, a complete household mapping and listing operation is conducted first. After that, exactly 22 households are randomly selected using systematic sampling.
🔥 The Ultimate Interview Question: De Facto vs De Jure Population
If you sit before the UPSC interview panel and they ask you about NFHS-5, they will definitely ask you this question: “In NFHS-5, India’s sex ratio surprisingly crossed the 1000 mark (1020 females per 1000 males). Does this mean India actually has more women than men now?”
To answer this brilliantly, you must explain the definition of population used by NFHS.
NFHS defines three concepts:
- Household: A person or group of related or unrelated persons who live together in the same dwelling unit(s), acknowledge one adult as the head, and share the same housekeeping arrangements (common kitchen).
- De jure population: All persons who are usual residents of the selected households, whether or not they stayed in the household the night before the interview.
- De facto population: All persons who stayed in the selected households the night before the interview (whether they are usual residents or just visiting guests).
The Catch: In NFHS, almost all data and tables are calculated based on the de facto population, unless specified otherwise.
The Explanation for the 1020 Sex Ratio: You must tell the panel that the sex ratio increase to 1020 in NFHS-5 must be interpreted carefully. Because NFHS uses a de facto approach (who slept there last night), it includes visitors. In India, visitors to a household are largely married daughters visiting their parental homes (especially for childbirth or festivals). Furthermore, around 30 crore single male migrants who leave their villages for work in cities are not present in their rural households on the night of the interview, meaning they are excluded from the rural count. This statistical phenomenon (counting visiting daughters + missing migrant sons) artificially inflates the sex ratio in the NFHS data. Therefore, while the sex ratio is improving, the 1020 figure is heavily influenced by the de facto sampling methodology!
2. Tracking Education – U-DISE+ and AISHE
While NFHS tracks our health, how do we track our schools and colleges? Here, we shift from “Sample Surveys” to “Administrative Statistics” (a concept we learned in Part 3).
Education data in India is primarily managed by the Ministry of Education through two massive administrative databases:
1. U-DISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education Plus) Initiated by the Department of School Education and Literacy, U-DISE+ is one of the largest Management Information Systems on school education in the world.
- What is it? It is not a sample survey; it is an annual census of all recognized and unrecognized schools in India.
- Data Collected: Every year, headmasters of over 1.5 million schools upload data regarding school infrastructure (availability of electricity, drinking water, computers, toilets), teacher strength, and student enrolments (Gross Enrolment Ratio, Net Enrolment Ratio, Dropout rates).
2. AISHE (All India Survey on Higher Education) While U-DISE+ handles schools, the Department of Higher Education conducts AISHE annually.
- Coverage: It covers all institutions in the country engaged in imparting higher education (Universities, Colleges, and Stand-Alone Institutions).
- Data Collected: It generates critical indicators like the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education, Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR), and Gender Parity Index (GPI).
(Note: These are classic examples of Administrative Statistics where data is generated as a byproduct of the administrative machinery, ensuring complete coverage up to the lowest district level without the sampling errors associated with sample surveys!)
3. MoSPI’s Role in Health & Education
While the Ministries of Health and Education maintain their own robust data systems, MoSPI’s National Statistical Office (NSO) also steps in to provide independent, socio-economic cross-verifications.
As we learned in Module 1, the Social Statistics Division (SSD) of MoSPI is responsible for covering sectors like Population, Health, and Education. To collect primary data for this, the NSS conducts specialized rounds.
For instance, the NSS 75th Round (July 2017 – June 2018) was specifically dedicated to Household Social Consumption: Education and Health.
- Education Focus: It built indicators on the participation of persons aged 3 to 35 years in the education system, the out-of-pocket expenditure incurred on education by households, and the use of the internet/computers.
- Health Focus: It gathered data on morbidity (illness rates), the utilization of healthcare services provided by the public and private sectors, and out-of-pocket medical expenditure (which helps the government measure the burden of healthcare costs on poor families).
By combining the administrative data of U-DISE+ with the sample survey data of NSS 75th round, policymakers get a 360-degree view of India’s social infrastructure!
Conclusion & What Lies Ahead?
To summarize:
- NFHS (by IIPS/MoHFW): Gives us our critical health, fertility, and nutrition indicators using a De Facto sampling approach.
- U-DISE+ & AISHE (by MoE): Gives us an administrative census of our schools and higher education institutes.
- NSS Rounds (by MoSPI): Measures the socio-economic impact and out-of-pocket expenditures related to health and education.
A healthy and educated population is a nation’s greatest asset. But once the population is educated and healthy, what do they need next? Jobs.
How does the government know if our youth are finding jobs or facing unemployment? Remember how we transitioned from 5-yearly employment surveys to a much faster system?
In our next blog, Part 14: Employment Stats – The PLFS Era, we will dive into the most highly debated survey in India today: The Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS). We will decode the concepts of Usual Status, Current Weekly Status (CWS), and the Rotational Panel Sampling Design!
Keep revising the difference between De Facto and De Jure populations, and we will see you in Part 14!