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

The sample of HIECS 2010/2011 is a self-weighted two-stage stratified cluster sample, of around 26500 households. The main elements of the sampling design are described in the following.

Sample Size
It has been deemed important to collect a smaller sample size (around 26.5 thousand households) compared to previous rounds due to the convergence in the time period over which the survey is conducted to be every two years instead of five years because of its importance. The sample has been proportionally distributed on the governorate level between urban and rural areas, in order to make the sample representative even for small governorates.
Thus, a sample of about 26500 households has been considered, and was distributed between urban and rural with the percentages of 47.1 % and 52.9, respectively.
This sample is divided into two parts:
a) A new sample of 16.5 thousand households selected from main enumeration areas.
b) A panel sample with 2008/2009 survey data of around 10 thousand households.

Cluster Size
The cluster size in the previous survey has been decreased compared to older surveys since large cluster sizes previously used were found to be too large to yield accepted design effect estimates (DEFT).
As a result, it has been decided to use a cluster size of only 16 households (that was increased to 18 households in urban governorates and Giza, in addition to urban areas in Helwan and 6th of October, to account for anticipated non-response in those governorates: in view of past experience indicating that non-response may almost be nil in rural governorates).
While the cluster size for the panel sample was 4 households.

Core Sample
The core sample is the master sample of any household sample required to be pulled for the purpose of studying the properties of individuals and families. It is a large sample and distributed on urban and rural areas of all governorates. It is a representative sample for the individual characteristics of the Egyptian society. This sample was implemented in January 2010 and its size reached more than 1 million household (1004800 household) selected from 5024 enumeration areas distributed on all governorates (urban/rural) proportionally with the sample size (the enumeration area size is around 200 households). The core sample is the sampling frame from which the samples for the surveys conducted by CAPMAS are pulled, such as the Labor Force Surveys, Income, Expenditure And Consumption Survey, Household Urban Migration Survey, ...etc, in addition to other samples that may be required for outsources.

New Households Sample
1000 sample areas were selected across all governorates (urban/rural) using a proportional technique with the sample size. The number required for each governorate (urban/rural) was selected from the enumeration areas of the core sample using a systematic sampling technique.

A more detailed description of the different sampling stages and allocation of sample across governorates is provided in the Methodology document available among external resources in both Arabic and English.


For the total sample, the response rate was 93.0% (91.2% in urban areas and 95.6% in rural areas).

Response rates on the governorate level at each sampling stage are presented in the methodology document attached to the documentation materials published in both Arabic and English.


In order for the sample estimates for the HIECS to be representative of the population, it is necessary to multiply the data by a sampling weight, or expansion factor. The basic weight for each sample household would be equal to the inverse of its probability of selection (calculated by multiplying the probabilities at each sampling stage).

The HIECS sample is approximately self-weighting at national level and strictly self-weighting at the governorate level, it should be easy to attach a weight to each sample household record in the computer files, and the tabulation programs can weight the data automatically. The sampling probabilities at each stage of selection will be maintained in an Excel spreadsheet so that the overall probability and corresponding weight can be calculated for each sample cluster.

The procedures for calculating the weights and variances are described in details in the methodology technical document attached to the documentation materials published in both Arabic and English.