The Households Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) has been taken in rural areas since 1963, and in urban areas as of 1968. At the beginning, it only contained the household expenditures questions; and it was just in 1974 that the questions concerning the household income were added to the survey's questionnaire.

The HIES aims to hand in estimates of the average income and expenditure for urban and rural households at provincial and country levels. It makes it possible to come to the household's income and expenditure composition and distribution patterns, the household consumption pattern, the weight for each commodity in the household consumption basket, also to calculate the poverty line, and study the imparity in household income and facilities.

The 2010 HIES was carried out by a sample of 18701 households in urban areas and 19584 households in rural areas. The survey detailed results, including 234 tables in two separate publications for urban and rural areas, can be available to the interested users, planners and researchers.

The HIES target population includes all private and collective settled households in urban and rural areas. A three-staged cluster sampling method with strata is used in the Survey. At  the first stage, the census areas are classified and selected.  At the second stage, the urban and rural blocks   are  selected  and the selection of sample 'households  is done at the third stage.   The number of  samples  is optimized to estimate average annual income and expenditure  of  the sample household  based on the aim of the survey.

In order to obtain estimations more representative of the whole year, the samples are evenly distributed between the months of the year.