Egypt - United Nations Development Programme

The 1996 HDR was another groundbreaking report and focussed on the theme of
poverty.
Prior to this report, poverty was much researched but never explicitly addressed
or publicly acknowledged by the state 2 . Breaking the silence on poverty was a timely act
of courage coming from a well-reputed, semi-governmental organization, the INP. This
choice of theme also came prior to the UN Declaration of 1996 as the Year of Poverty
Eradication and conformed with the declaration of the World Summit for Social
Development in Copenhagen in 1995. In fact, it preceded the decision by the Human
Development Report Office (HDRO) at UNDP New York to devote its 1997 HDR to the
subject of poverty.
The report attempted to assess poverty in Egypt and provided policy guidelines
for poverty alleviation from an HD perspective. Whereas the 1994 and 1995 HDRs used
a relative poverty line for measuring poverty in Egypt, the 1996 HDR established a
consumption-poverty line to measure absolute poverty. The report concluded that nearly
23 percent of Egyptians lived below the poverty line, 7 percent of which were considered
ultra poor. The report also revealed that Upper Egypt contributed to poverty incidence by
a larger proportion than its share in the total population of Egypt.
By exposing the reality and magnitude of poverty in Egypt, the 1996 HDR had a
profound impact on moving ‘sensitive’ data to the public domain, an important step on
the road to transparency and accountability. It was also an important catalyst for the
initiation of a Poverty Reduction Action Plan, which was initiated by the Ministry of
Planning some years later.
Besides using data from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey for 1995,
conducted by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), and
preliminary results from the 1996 population census, the report conducted a Semi
Participatory Assessment Survey on people’s perception of poverty in seven
governorates. The survey attempted to get first hand descriptions of people’s livelihoods,
problems and needs, and to gauge differences and similarities in views of the poor and
non-poor on how they define poverty. The survey explored survival strategies of the
poor, testing a number of hypotheses on poverty with policy and programming
implications. The report also discussed social safety nets in Egypt and focussed on rural
and urban poverty issues.
Furthermore, a capability poverty measure introduced earlier by the global HDR
was used. In the case of Egypt, this measure included the proportion of children under
five who are underweight; the proportion of births unattended by a doctor, trained nurse
or midwife; and the proportion of female household population age six and over who
have no education. According to this measure, 44.1 percent of Upper Egypt’s population
were capability poor as opposed to 30.4 percent for Lower Egypt.
2 Poor are referred to in official and rhetorical reference by the government as mahdoody el dakhl i.e. those
with limited incomes.
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