The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

VI.22
next question becomes "How much would they suffer?" The magnitude of the
negative effect depends on initial conditions, how utilities are priced in the
first place. Electricity, for example, is very cheap in Egypt, especially for
small consumers. An estimated 40% of Egyptian households use from 0-50
kilowatt hours (kwh) of electricity per month (the first rate block) and they
pay only half a piaster for each kwh. The second rate block consumers,
another 40% of Egyptian households, use from 50-200 kwh per month, and they
pay about 8.3 piasters per kwh. The final rate block (20% of households) uses
more than 200 kwh per month. Overall, the cost of one kwh for all rate
blocks combined in 1996 was about 2.5 piasters per kwh. There is clearly
room for price increases given the very low costs to consumers.
VLF Analysis Using 1995/1996 HIECS Data
Following best practices, the design for the housing section of the
1995/1996 HIECS tried to incorporate as much information as possible within a
limited set of interview questions. There are two main sections, the
characteristics section and the expenditures section. Eventually it would take
respondents less than five minutes to answer the two page characteristics
section - 21 multiple answer plus the durable inventory list. Because the
interviewer was present to corroborate the testimony of the respondent, the
housing characteristics data have, arguably, the highest quality of all the
HIECS data. The expenditure section consists of annual housing and utilities,
and fuel and lighting payments. These estimates are likely prone to more
bias, given the nature of the expenditures - continuous rather than
categorical, in addition to the sensitivity about rents and owners' equivalent
rents in general.
Certain potential housing variables were considered in the design phase
of the 1995/1996 project but eventually discarded. The enumerators, through
general observations, could have been trained to rate on a Guttman scale (1 to
5), such issues as the general cleanliness or the lack of obstructions in main
traffic areas, general state of repair of walls, abundance of furniture and
decoration, etc. These interviewer-source techniques might be employed in
the next HIECS.
Three variables of the housing characteristics section bear further
scrutiny for their importance: housing type, tenure, and the key money proxy.