An important source of differences is the number of food items in the consumption questionnaire. Surveys with more food items listed tend to elicit higher levels of consumption, which lowers the reported poverty rate (Lanjouw and Lanjouw, 2001). Pakistan has the lowest number of food items listed in the survey at 69, while Sri Lanka has the highest at 227. Pakistan, Nepal, Maldives and Afghanistan all have less than 100 food items listed in their survey, while Bangladesh, India and Bhutan have 141, 143 and 130 items listed, respectively. Similarly, there is a large variation in the number of non-food items listed in these surveys. Among non-food expenditures, Nepal asks its respondents to recall only 95 items, Pakistan and Sri Lanka asks 99 and 97 items respectively, while Maldives lists 483 non-food items for households to recall. Bangladesh, Bhutan and India ask their households to recall whether they consumed 221, 122 and 338 non-food items respectively.

|**Table 5. Summary of the consumption questionnaire design **|
|---|

|**A**|**fghanistan**|**Bangladesh**|**Bhutan**|**India**|**Maldives**|**Nepal**|**Pakistan**|**Sri Lanka**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Food expenditures<br>(no. of items)|91|141|130|143|92|74|69|227<sup>(1)</sup>|
|Diary vs. recall|Recall|Recall|Recall|Recall|Diary|Recall|Recall|Diary/<br>Recall|
|Reference period<br>(food<br>consumption)|Daily/7<br>Days|Daily<br>/<br>weekly<br>(for<br>2<br>weeks)|7<br>days/1<br>month/1<br>year|1 month|1 month|1 week /<br>typical<br>month|<br>2 weeks /<br>one month|1 week|
|Food<br>quantities<br>available|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes<sup>(2)</sup>|
|Non-food<br>expenditures (no.<br>of items)|38|221|122|338|483|95|99|97<sup>(3)</sup>|
|Reference period<br>(non-food exp)|1/12<br>months|1/3/12<br>months|1/12<br>months|1/12<br>months|1/12<br>months|1/12<br>months|1/12<br>months|1/6/12<br>months|

Source: Authors’ own estimates based on South Asia Harmonized Micro Dataset (SARMD). (1) They included 6 liquor and tobacco COICOP codes among food expenditures.

(2) Units of measure are specified in the questionnaire but not in the datasets. (3) Tobacco and drugs excluded.

The collection of consumption data also varies from country to country. Consumption data are generally collected using two methods, (i) diary – where the household records all the consumption data over a certain period in a notebook, or (ii) recall – where the households list what they has consumed for the past few days from memory. While the diary may seem to be a better method, in practice, interviewers often assist in completing the diary, effectively blurring the line (Beegle, et al., 2012). Sri Lanka uses both diary and recall methods to collect consumption data, Maldives uses a diary for all items, while other countries use recall to collect the data.

The length of consumption recall is another source of differences. Respondents are asked to recall their food consumption for the day, last week, last two weeks, and last month. For food items, Bangladeshi enumerators spend two weeks in the primary sampling unit (PSU), visiting each household in the PSU seven times in a two-week period. During each visit, the household is asked about their food consumption in the past two days, so this covers a total of 14 days of food consumption. In addition, information about spice consumption in Bangladesh is collected once a week during those two weeks. On the other hand, Bhutan asks the respondents to recall the last week, last month and last one year of food consumption. India and Maldives ask the households 8