| Code | NE.CON.PRVT.KD |
| Indicator Name | Households and NPISHs final consumption expenditure (constant 2015 US$) |
| Short definition | This field includes expenditure on goods and services by the Household and NPISH sector for the direct satisfaction of human needs or wants, whether individual or collective. This indicator is expressed in constant prices, meaning the series has been adjusted to account for price changes over time. The reference year for this adjustment is 2015. This indicator is expressed in United States dollars. |
| Long definition | This field includes expenditure on goods and services by the Household and NPISH sector for the direct satisfaction of human needs or wants, whether individual or collective. This indicator is expressed in constant prices, meaning the series has been adjusted to account for price changes over time. The reference year for this adjustment is 2015. This indicator is expressed in United States dollars. |
| Source | Country official statistics, National Statistical Organizations and/or Central Banks;
National Accounts data files, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD);
Staff estimates, World Bank (WB) |
| Topic | Economic Policy & Debt: National accounts: US$ at constant 2015 prices: Expenditure on GDP |
| Dataset | WDI |
| Unit of measure | constant 2015 US$ |
| Periodicity | Annual |
| Reference period | 1960-2024 |
| Aggregation method | Gap-filled total |
| Statistical concept and methodology | Methodology: National accounts are compiled in accordance with international standards: System of National Accounts, 2008 or 1993 versions. Specific information on how countries compile their national accounts can be found on the IMF website: https://dsbb.imf.org/
Statistical concept(s): The conceptual elements of the SNA (System of National Accounts) measure what takes place in the economy, between which agents, and for what purpose. At the heart of the SNA is the production of goods and services. These may be used for consumption in the period to which the accounts relate or may be accumulated for use in a later period. In simple terms, the amount of value added generated by production represents GDP. The income corresponding to GDP is distributed to the various agents or groups of agents as income and it is the process of distributing and redistributing income that allows one agent to consume the goods and services produced by another agent or to acquire goods and services for later consumption. The way in which the SNA captures this pattern of economic flows is to identify the activities concerned by recognizing the institutional units in the economy and by specifying the structure of accounts capturing the transactions relevant to one stage or another of the process by which goods and services are produced and ultimately consumed. |
| Development relevance | This indicator is related to the national accounts, which are critical for understanding and managing a country's economy. They provide a framework for the analysis of economic performance. National accounts are the basis for estimating the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Income (GNI), which are the most widely used indicator of economic performance. They are essential for government policymakers, providing the data needed to design and assess fiscal and monetary policies; and are also used by businesses and investors to assess the economic climate and make investment decisions. NAS enable comparison between economies, which is crucial for international trade, investment decisions, and economic competitiveness. More specifically, this indicator is related to the expenditure approach used to calculate GDP, which focuses on the total amount of spending on final goods and services within an economy over a specific period. Unlike the production approach, which looks at the supply side by summing the value of output produced by all sectors, the expenditure approach looks at the demand side by summing all expenditures. This demand-side analysis provides insights into the spending behaviors of different sectors, including households, businesses, the government, and foreign entities. Also, by breaking down expenditures into categories like consumption, investment, government spending, and net exports, it helps identify which components are driving or hindering economic growth. This approach can thus be used to assess the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies. Overall, the expenditure approach is crucial for understanding the dynamics of an economy, guiding policy decisions, and providing a comprehensive view of economic activity from the perspective of total spending. |
| Limitations and exceptions | Because policymakers have tended to focus on fostering the growth of output, and because data on production are easier to collect than data on spending, many countries generate their primary estimate of GDP using the production approach. Moreover, many countries do not estimate all the components of national expenditures but instead derive some of the main aggregates indirectly using GDP (based on the production approach) as the control total. Household final consumption expenditure is often estimated as a residual, by subtracting all other known expenditures from GDP. The resulting aggregate may incorporate fairly large discrepancies. When household consumption is calculated separately, many of the estimates are based on household surveys, which tend to be one-year studies with limited coverage. Thus the estimates quickly become outdated and must be supplemented by estimates using price- and quantity-based statistical procedures. Complicating the issue, in many developing countries the distinction between cash outlays for personal business and those for household use may be blurred.
Informal economic activities pose a particular measurement problem, especially in developing countries, where much economic activity is unrecorded. A complete picture of the economy requires estimating household outputs produced for home use, sales in informal markets, barter exchanges, and illicit or deliberately unreported activities. The consistency and completeness of such estimates depend on the skill and methods of the compiling statisticians.
Measures of growth in consumption and capital formation are subject to two kinds of inaccuracy. The first stems from the difficulty of measuring expenditures at current price levels. The second arises in deflating current price data to measure volume growth, where results depend on the relevance and reliability of the price indexes and weights used. Measuring price changes is more difficult for investment goods than for consumption goods because of the one-time nature of many investments and because the rate of technological progress in capital goods makes capturing change in quality difficult. (An example is computers - prices have fallen as quality has improved.) |
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| License Type | CC BY-4.0 |
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