[GB] Living Costs and Food Survey (Expenditure and Food Survey)

Full name of the series in original language

Living Costs and Food Survey (Expenditure and Food Survey)

Abstract

Background:
A household food consumption and expenditure survey has been conducted each year in Great Britain (excluding Northern Ireland) since 1940. At that time the National Food Survey (NFS) covered a sample drawn solely from urban working-class households, but this was extended to a fully demographically representative sample in 1950. From 1957 onwards the Family Expenditure Survey (FES) provided information on all household expenditure patterns including food expenditure, with the NFS providing more detailed information on food consumption and expenditure. The NFS was extended to cover Northern Ireland from 1996 onwards. In April 2001 these surveys were combined to form the Expenditure and Food Survey (EFS), which completely replaced both series. From January 2008, the EFS became known as the Living Costs and Food (LCF) module of the Integrated Household Survey (IHS).
The transition from the EFS to the LCF was caused by the introduction of a number of changes in the EFS questionnaire in 2008, carried out in order to bring it under the umbrella of the Integrated Household Survey (IHS). The goal was to be able to use some of the data collected during the LCF fieldwork in the IHS datasets. The EFS questionnaire was altered to accommodate the insertion of a core set of questions, common to all of the separate modules which together comprise the IHS. Some of these core questions are simply questions which were previously asked in the same or a similar format on all of the IHS component surveys (including the EFS). In most cases these did not affect the LCF data itself: the new variables added to the questionnaires are not made available in the LCF datasets but instead in the IHS. A few variables names changed, and in a small number of cases, mostly related to summary income indicators, variables were deleted.

History:
The EFS was the result of more than two years' development work to bring together the FES and NFS; both survey series were well-established and important sources of information for government and the wider community, and had charted changes and patterns in spending and food consumption since the 1950s. Whilst the NFS and FES series are now finished, users should note that previous data from both series are still available from the UK Data Archive, under GNs 33071 (NFS) and 33057 (FES). As noted above, the EFS is now known as the Living Costs and Food Survey.

Purpose of the LCF (formerly EFS)
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has overall project management and financial responsibility for the LCF/EFS, while the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) sponsors the food data. As with the FES and NFS, the LCF continues to be primarily used to provide information for the Retail Prices Index, National Accounts estimates of household expenditure, analysis of the effect of taxes and benefits, and trends in nutrition. The results are multi-purpose, however, providing an invaluable supply of economic and social data. The merger of the two surveys also brings benefits for users, as a single survey on food expenditure removes the difficulties of reconciling data from two sources.

Design and methodology
The LCF collects information on spending patterns and the cost of living that reflects household budgets across the country, achieving a sample of around 6,000 households a year. The LCF covers the private household population aged over 16 in the UK. Since 1998/9 the survey has included some information on children aged between 7 and 15. LCF data are available at the person and household level, the expenditure item as well as the benefit unit. However, the LCF is predominantly designed to be used as a household level survey both in its sample design and in the topics it seeks to address. Household level analysis can often be more suitable for analysing expenditure, particularly where items are shared between household members.

The design of the LCF/EFS is based on the FES, although the use of new processing software by the data creators has resulted in a dataset which differs from the previous FES structure. The most significant change in terms of reporting expenditure, however, is the introduction of the European Standard Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP), in place of the codes used in the FES and NFS, which were unique to the two surveys. An additional level of hierarchy has been developed for the EFS to improve the mapping to the previous FES and NFS codes. The LCF/EFS was conducted on a financial year basis from 2001, but was moved from a financial to a calendar year basis from January 2006 in anticipation of the introduction of the IHS. Therefore, whilst SNs 4697, 5003, 5210, 5375 and 5688 cover 2001-2002, 2002-2003, 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 respectively, SN 5986 covers January-December 2006, and subsequent studies cover January-December of the survey year. The documentation for SN 5986 provides further details of the change in methodology.
As a repeated cross-sectional survey the LCF can be used to monitor patterns of aggregate change. However, the survey cannot be used to assess individual changes as we do not have repeated measures for individuals. Although the EFS replaced the Family Expenditure Survey and the National Food Survey in 2001 there are issues with comparing data from the LCF with these other sources.

Suppressed variables
Users should note that certain variables in the data are suppressed for reasons of confidentiality. These include geographical variables with detail below government office region and urban/rural area indicators.

Northern Ireland sample
Users of the LCF/EFS should note that, due to funding constraints, from January 2010 the Northern Ireland (NI) sample used for the LCF was reduced to a sample proportionate to the NI population relative to the UK.

Food database:
Further information about the LCF/EFS food databases can be found on the GOV.UK Family Food Statistics web pages.

Household questionnaire:
The first part of the LCF/EFS questionnaire collects information about households; the majority of the questions are asked at a household-level, with the household reference person typically responding on behalf of the household as a whole. The household questionnaire includes questions on a range of subjects including family relationships, ethnicity, employment details and the ownership of household durables. It is also the source of all expenditure information not recorded in the LCF/EFS diary; principally that which concerns regular payments typically made by all households and large, infrequently purchased items such as vehicles, package holidays and home improvements.

Individual questionnaire:
The income questionnaire follows on immediately from the household questionnaire and collects the key person-level variables used on the survey. The principal components of the LCF income questionnaire are the sections covering income from employment, benefits and assets. These together form an overview of the total income received by each household, as well as each household member individually.

LCF/EFS Diary:
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. The raw diary data is held in a separate file, but is not made publicly available for confidentiality reasons. Therefore, users should be aware that the LCF/EFS dataset available from the Archive includes only derived variables from the expenditure diary.

Geographic coverage

United Kingdom

Time method

Cross-section

Time period

2001 => 2012

Types of available microdata

Consistency type

Access mode

Update date

15/09/2021