Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey, HIECS 2008/2009 - Egypt

Abstract --------------------------- THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 50% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE CENTRAL AGENCY FOR PUBLIC MOBILIZATION AND STATISTICS (CAPMAS) 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 2008/2009 is the tenth Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey that was carried out in 2008/2009, 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 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 measure mean household and per-capita expenditure for various expenditure items along with socio-economic correlates. - To define percentage distribution of expenditure for various items used in compiling consumer price indices which is considered important indicator for measuring inflation. - To define mean 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 dependant 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 and expenditure for commodities and services. - 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 sources and the levels of expenditure in both urban and rural areas. - To identify the value of expenditure for food according to 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 ...) in urban and rural areas. - To identify the percentage distribution of income recipients 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- Doubling the number of area segments from 1200 in the previous survey to 2526 segments with decreasing the number of households selected from each segment to be (20) households instead of (40) in the previous survey to ensure appropriate representatives in the society. 2- Changing the survey period to 15 days instead of one month in the previous one 200412005, to lighten the respondent burden and encourage more cooperation. 3- Adding some additional questions: a- Participation or the benefits gained from pension and social security system. b- Participation in health insurance system. 4- Increasing quality control Procedures especially for fieldwork to ensure data accuracy and avoid any errors in suitable time. The raw survey data provided by the Statistical Agency were cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major project that started in 2009. During which extensive efforts have been exerted to acquire, clean, harmonize, preserve and disseminate micro data of existing household surveys in several Arab countries. Geographic coverage --------------------------- Covering a sample of urban and rural areas in all the governorates. Analysis unit --------------------------- 1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person. Universe --------------------------- The survey covered a national sample of households and all individuals permanently residing in surveyed households. Kind of data --------------------------- Sample survey data [ssd] Sampling procedure --------------------------- THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 50% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE CENTRAL AGENCY FOR PUBLIC MOBILIZATION AND STATISTICS (CAPMAS) The sample of HIECS, 2008-2009 is a two-stage stratified cluster sample, approximately self-weighted, of nearly 48000 households. The main elements of the sampling design are described in the following. 1- Sample Size It has been deemed important to retain the same sample size of the previous two HIECS rounds. Thus, a sample of about 48000 households has been considered. The justification of maintaining the sample size at this level is to have estimates with levels of precision similar to those of the previous two rounds: therefore trend analysis with the previous two surveys will not be distorted by substantial changes in sampling errors from round to another. In addition, this relatively large national sample implies proportional samples of reasonable sizes for smaller governorates. Nonetheless, over-sampling has been introduced to raise the sample size of small governorates to about 1000 households As a result, reasonably precise estimates could be extracted for those governorates. The over-sampling has resulted in a slight increase in the national sample to 48658 households. 2- Cluster size An important lesson learned from the previous two HIECS rounds is that the cluster size applied in both surveys is found to be too large to yield an accepted design effect estimates. The cluster size was 40 households in the 2004-2005 round, descending from 80 households in the 1999-2000 round. The estimates of the design effect (deft) for most survey measures of the latest round were extraordinary large. As a result, it has been decided to decrease the cluster size to only 19 households (20 households in urban governorates to account for anticipated non-response in those governorates: in view of past experience non-response is almost nil in rural governorates). A more detailed description of the different sampling stages and allocation of sample across governorates is provided in the Methodology document available among the documentation materials published in both Arabic and English. Mode of data collection --------------------------- Face-to-face [f2f] Research instrument --------------------------- Three different questionnaires have been designed as following: 1- Expenditure and consumption questionnaire. 2- Diary questionnaire for expenditure and consumption. 3- Income questionnaire. In designing the questionnaires of expenditure, consumption and income, we were taking into our consideration the following: - Using the recent concepts and definitions of International Labor Organization approved in the International Convention of Labor Statisticians held in Geneva, 2003. - Using the recent Classification of Individual Consumption according to Purpose (COICOP). - Using more than one approach of expenditure measurement to serve many purposes of the survey. A brief description of each questionnaire is given next: 1- Expenditure and Consumption Questionnaire ---------------------------------------------------------- This questionnaire comprises 14 tables in addition to identification and geographic data of household on the cover page. The questionnaire is divided into two main sections. Section one: Household schedule and other information. It includes: - Demographic characteristics and basic data for all household individuals consisting of 18 questions for every person. - Members of household who are currently working abroad. - The household ration card. - The main outlets that provide food and beverage. - Domestic and foreign tourism. - The housing conditions including 15 questions. - Means of transportation used to go to work or school. - The household possession of appliances and means of transportation. - This section includes some questions which help to define the social and economic level of households which in turn, help interviewers to check the plausibility of expenditure, consumption and income data. Section two: Expenditure and consumption data It includes 14 tables as follows: - The quantity and value of food and beverages commodities actually consumed. - The quantity and value of the actual consumption of alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics. - The quantity and value of the clothing and footwear. - The household expenditure for housing. - The household expenditure for furnishings, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house. - The household expenditure for health care services. - The household expenditure for transportation. - The household expenditure for communication. - The household expenditure for recreation and culture. - The household expenditure for education. - The household expenditure at restaurants and hotels. - The household expenditure for miscellaneous goods and services. - Transfer payments. - Total annual household expenditure (prepared in office) The tables from 1 to 13 include all types of commodities and services (771 Items), 47 Sub-group and 12 Main groups in addition to transfer payments. This questionnaire has been designed to be pre coded for all expenditure items and household characteristics except occupation and industry. Whenever relevant, the questionnaire provides spaces for different reference periods such as two weeks, monthly, quarterly and annually. The total number of items is increased to 771 commodity and service compared with 746 in the last survey. 2 - Diary Questionnaire ----------------------------- It has been prepared to help households recording - on a daily basis- the quantity and value of what have been consumed of food and beverages during the reference period (15 days). The interviewers are instructed to check what households have recorded in the preceding three days. In case of the inability of some households to record their daily expenditure, the interviewer has to do so. The questionnaire includes: a- Letter addressed to the head of household to inform him/her about the importance of survey so that his/her cooperation may be stimulated. b- Instructions of data recording for households and interviewers. c- A group of modules to record daily consumption of household as follows: Module (A): Includes twenty pages to record the daily consumed, quantity and value of food and beverages including: Date, source of commodities, quantity and value. Module (B): Includes eight pages to record the value of expenditure for meals and tobacco outside the house, in addition to the value of expenditure for food prepared outside the house and consumed inside the house. Module (C): Includes ten pages to record the total of quantity and value of consumed food and beverages according to source, either from household production or not. Module (E): Includes two pages to record total expenditure on food and beverages consumed outside home. 3- Income questionnaire ------------------------------- It includes household income data according to income sources. It consists of several tables; each is designated to a specific income source. These sources are: - Wages and salaries for wage/salary earners among household members. - Agriculture projects. - Non Agriculture projects. - Financial properties. - Non- financial properties. - Imputed rent of owner-occupied dwellings. - Received cash and in kind transfers Starting from 2004/2005 survey, a new table has been added for absent household members who spent a part of the survey year with the household and contributed in its aggregated income during that period. Absence of a household member can be for several reasons such as traveling, marriage, death, etc. Cleaning operations --------------------------- Raw Data ======= Office Editing: It is one of the main stages of the survey. It started as soon as the questionnaires were received from the field and accomplished by selected work groups. It includes: a- Editing of coverage and completeness b- Editing of consistency c- Arithmetic editing of quantities and values. Data Coding: Specialized staff has coded the data of industry, occupation and geographical identification. Data Processing and preparing final results It included machine data entry, data validation and tabulation and preparing final survey volumes Harmonized Data ============ - The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) is used to clean and harmonize the datasets. - The harmonization process starts with cleaning all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency. - Cleaned data files are then all merged to produce one data file on the individual level containing all variables subject to harmonization. - A country-specific program is generated for each dataset to generate/compute /recode/rename/format/label harmonized variables. - A post-harmonization cleaning process is then conducted on the data. - Harmonized data is saved on the household as well as the individual level, in SPSS and converted to STATA format. Response rate --------------------------- For the total sample, the response rate was 96.3% (93.95% in urban areas and 98.4% 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. Sampling error estimates --------------------------- The sampling error of major survey estimates has been derived using the Ultimate Cluster Method as applied in the CENVAR Module of the Integrated Microcomputer Processing System (IMPS) Package. In addition to the estimate of sampling error, the output includes estimates of coefficient of variation, design effect (DEFF) and 95% confidence intervals. Data appraisal --------------------------- Quality Control Procedures: The precision of survey results depends to a large extent on how the survey has been prepared for. As such, it was deemed crucial to exert much effort and to take necessary actions towards rigorous preparation for the present survey. The preparatory activities, extended over 3 months, included forming Technical Committee. The Committee has set up the general framework of survey implementation such as: 1- Applying the recent international recommendations of different concepts and definitions of income and expenditure considering maintaining the consistency with the previous surveys in order to compare and study the changes in pertinent indicators. 2- Evaluating the quality of data in all different Implementation stages to avoid or minimize errors to the lowest extent possible through: - Implementing field editing after finishing data collection for households in governorates to avoid any errors in suitable time. - Setting up a program for the Survey Technical Committee Members and survey staff for visiting field work in all governorates (each 15 days) to solve any problem in the proper time. - Re-interviewing a sample of households by Quality Control Department and examining the differences with the original responses. - For the purpose of quality assurance, tables were generated for each survey round where internal consistency checks were performed to study the plausibility of mean household expenditure on major expenditure commodity groups and its variability over major geographic regions.