Harmonized Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HHIES)

Back in 2009, ERF has started the data harmonization project by securing a number of Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES). A data team of qualified statisticians is dedicated to the cleaning and harmonization of the acquired data sets following the ERF set of pre-defined standards guided by best practices pursued by other organizations working in the same field.

A first phase of the HHIES was disseminated in April 2013 along with OAMDI launching, during which 17 Surveys from Egypt, Palestine and Jordan were made available to data users.

In February 2014, ERF, aiming at enriching HHIES data disseminated through the first phase, has implemented a second phase of data harmonization/dissemination to include composite codes for essential variables considered, on the household as well as the individual level, following the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) coding practices. Since then, new HHIESs are made available on OAMDI as more memorandum of understanding are being signed with relevant statistical offices, and more new datasets are being acquired.

HIES data are harmonized to a set of standard variables covering on the household level, subject to availability in the raw data, the following categories::

  • File identification.
  • Geographical characteristics.
  • Household composition.
  • Dwelling characteristics.
  • Ownership of durables, livestock and land.
  • Head’s and spouse’s characteristics.
  • Annual household expenditure.
  • Annual household income.

On the individual’s level, the following categories were covered, subject to availability in the original data:

  • File identification.
  • Geographical characteristics.
  • Demographics.
  • Father’s and mother’s characteristics.
  • Nationality and immigration.
  • Education.
  • Health.
  • Labor.
  • Annual individual income.

Harmonized Labor Force Surveys (HLFS)

ERF acquires, cleans, harmonizes, documents and disseminates Labor Force Surveys (LFS) for the Arab region, Iran and Turkey. Extensive efforts have been devoted to the harmonization of these surveys to ensure their consistency and comparability across countries and over time.

In early 2015, OAMDI witnessed the dissemination of the first set of harmonized LFSs.

LFS data are harmonized to a set of ERF pre-defined standard variables covering on the household level, if available in the raw data, the following categories:

  • File identification.
  • Geographical characteristics.
  • Household composition.
  • LFS classification of household members.
  • Head’s and spouse’s characteristics.
  • Dwelling characteristics.
  • Ownership of durables.

On the individual’s level, the following categories were covered, subject to availability in the original data:

  • File identification and information.
  • Demographics.
  • Nationality and immigration.
  • Education.
  • Current labor status.
  • Employment in main job.
  • Wages and incomes.
  • Employment in secondary job.
  • Last held job characteristics.
  • Unemployment characteristics.
  • Inactivity reason(s).

Harmonized Household Health Surveys (HHHS)

ERF acquires, harmonizes, documents and disseminates Health surveys for the Arab region, Iran and Turkey.
The raw survey data provided by the Statistical Offices were harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, to create an inter-year’s comparable version of all available surveys in a certain country.

Harmonization at this stage only included unifying variables’ names, labels and some definitions. Thus, the health data are only harmonized on the year level in the same country, but are not comparable across countries.
 
You can Access our Micro Data sets, through the

ERF Micro Data Catalogue (NADA)

Links:

For any inquiries related to the data, please contact:
ERF data team
Email: erfdataportal@erf.org.eg