Household survey data fills state inflation gaps from Covid
A Reserve Bank of India working paper derives state-wise inflation estimates for four pandemic months when official data was never published. Economists Purnima Shaw and R. K. Sinha used household survey data to reconstruct the missing figures.
Four months without official numbers
The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the collection of official price statistics worldwide.
In India, imputed inflation indices were released only at the all-India aggregate level for April and May 2020.
State-wise official CPI-U inflation figures remain unavailable for four months: April and May 2020, and April and May 2021.
The paper uses granular data from the RBI's Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH), which continued to be conducted bimonthly throughout the pandemic.
By combining centre-wise urban inflation perceptions, three-month-ahead expectations, and past realized state-wise CPI-U inflation, the authors derive state-level estimates for the missing months.
Survey estimates track the official series
When aggregated, the derived state-wise estimates closely follow the all-India official CPI inflation series for the period.
The paper appears in the RBI Working Paper series, launched in March 2011 to disseminate staff and co-authored research for comment and debate.
The authors argue state-level inflation data are essential under the current inflation targeting regime, and that filling these specific gaps could support future research relying on state-level inflation time series.
A patch, not a replacement
Survey-based imputation is a sensible workaround for a genuine data void, but it remains an approximation, not an official release.
The pandemic months were exceptionally volatile, which is precisely when perception-based proxies are least reliable.
Researchers should treat these estimates as a research convenience rather than a definitive historical record.
IN: