Egypt, Arab Rep. - Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey 2010-2011

The Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey (HIECS) is of great importance among other household surveys conducted by statistical agencies in various countries around the world. This survey provides a large amount of data to rely on in measuring the living standards of households and individuals, as well as establishing databases that serve in measuring poverty, designing social assistance programs, and providing necessary weights to compile consumer price indices, considered to be an important indicator to assess inflation.

The HIECS 2010/2011 is the tenth Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey that was carried out in 2010/2011, among a long series of similar surveys that started back in 1955.

The survey main objectives are:

- To identify expenditure levels and patterns of population as well as socio- economic and demographic differentials.

- To measure average household and per-capita expenditure for various expenditure items along with socio-economic correlates.

- To Measure the change in living standards and expenditure patterns and behavior for the individuals and households in the panel sample, previously surveyed in 2008/2009, for the first time during 12 months representing the survey period.

- To define percentage distribution of expenditure for various items used in compiling consumer price indices which is considered important indicator for measuring inflation.

- To estimate the quantities, values of commodities and services consumed by households during the survey period to determine the levels of consumption and estimate the current demand which is important to predict future demands.

- To define average household and per-capita income from different sources.

- To provide data necessary to measure standard of living for households and individuals. Poverty analysis and setting up a basis for social welfare assistance are highly dependent on the results of this survey.

- To provide essential data to measure elasticity which reflects the percentage change in expenditure for various commodity and service groups against the percentage change in total expenditure for the purpose of predicting the levels of expenditure and consumption for different commodity and service items in urban and rural areas.

- To provide data essential for comparing change in expenditure against change in income to measure income elasticity of expenditure.

- To study the relationships between demographic, geographical, housing characteristics of households and their income.

- To provide data necessary for national accounts especially in compiling inputs and outputs tables.

- To identify consumers behavior changes among socio-economic groups in urban and rural areas.

- To identify per capita food consumption and its main components of calories, proteins and fats according to its nutrition components and the levels of expenditure in both urban and rural areas.

- To identify the value of expenditure for food according to its sources, either from household production or not, in addition to household expenditure for non-food commodities and services.

- To identify distribution of households according to the possession of some appliances and equipments such as (cars, satellites, mobiles ,…etc) in urban and rural areas that enables measuring household wealth index.

- To identify the percentage distribution of income earners according to some background variables such as housing conditions, size of household and characteristics of head of household.

Compared to previous surveys, the current survey experienced certain peculiarities, among which :

1) The total sample of the current survey (26.5 thousand households) is divided into two sections:

a - A new sample of 16.5 thousand households. This sample was used to study the geographic differences between urban governorates, urban and rural areas, and frontier governorates as well as other discrepancies related to households characteristics and household size, head of the household's education status, ....... etc.

b - A panel sample with 2008/2009 survey data of around 10 thousand households was selected to accurately study the changes that may have occurred in the households' living standards over the period between the two surveys and over time in the future since CAPMAS will continue to collect panel data for HIECS in the coming years.

2) The number of enumeration area segments is reduced from 2526 in the previous survey to 1000 segments for the new sample, with decreasing the number of households selected from each segment to be (16/18) households instead of (19/20) in the previous survey.

3) Some additional questions that showed to be important based on previous surveys results, were added, such as:

a - Collect the expenditure data on education and health on the person level and not on the household level to enable assessing the real level of average expenditure on those services based on the number of beneficiaries.

b - The extent of health services provided to monitor the level of services available in the Egyptian society.

c - Smoking patterns and behaviors (tobacco types- consumption level- quantities purchased and their values).

d - Counting the number of household members younger than 18 years of age registered in ration cards.

e - Add more details to social security pensions data (for adults, children, scholarships, families of civilian martyrs due to military actions) to match new systems of social security.

f - Duration of usage and current value of durable goods aiming at estimating the service cost of personal consumption, as in the case of imputed rents.

4) Quality control procedures especially for fieldwork, are increased, to ensure data accuracy and avoid any errors in suitable time, as well as taking all the necessary measures to guarantee that mistakes are not repeated, with the application of the principle of reward and punishment.

Sample survey data [ssd]

- Household/family

- Individual/person