Frequently Asked Questions

Basics

1 What is the Family Income and Expenditure Survey ?

2 What is found in the results of the FIES ?

3 How are the results of the FIES utilized ?

Methodology

4 The FIES has not been covering one-person households or those engaged in agriculture, forestry and fishery. Have the statistics been reflecting the entire household consumption in Japan properly ?

5 The survey households of the FIES are biased towards such peculiar households as government officials', aren't they ?

6 The 1999 FIES expenditure decreased a great deal, because the survey sample contained too many government officials' households. Is this true ?

7 Why is quantity investigated also in the FIES ?

8 It is said that households keeping family account books are getting fewer these days.
Is it still feasible to conduct the FIES accurately for households unaccustomed to record receipts and disbursements without any omission every day ?

9 Income and expenditure of grown up sons and daughters living with their parents are likely omitted from family account books in the FIES, isn't it ?

Tips for understanding the FIES results

10 The FIES results differ from sales at department stores and supermarkets, don't they ?

11 Only with 8,000 sample households of two-or-more-persons households in the whole country, how accurate are the FIES results ?

12 The FIES results and the quarterly estimates of GDP (QE) of the national accounts sometimes change differently. What is the reason ?

13 Why does income in the FIES statistics change differently from wages estimated from the Monthly Labor Survey ?

Others

14 It seems that the FIES results are released too late to grasp the consumption movement timely.

15 As "household consumption" in the FIES statistics is presented in terms of per household, does "household consumption" decrease when the number of household members decreases ?

16 Does the FIES catch up properly with the trends in consumption pattern such as increase in expenditure on goods and services related to information and technology ?