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

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IV.8<br />

did not permit even a good estimate of shortened hours. 7 In the next labor<br />

force survey CAPMAS should devote serious attention to the disparity between<br />

the individual will to work and the actual nu<strong>mb</strong>er of hours spent in profitable<br />

employment.<br />

IV.C Some HIECS Human Capital Attributes<br />

This section characterizes how human capital is distributed in Egypt,<br />

how the labor market is segmented. Table II.5 of Chapter II showed earners<br />

classified by sex and region. Males represent a fairly constant 70% of all<br />

earners throughout the regions, more in traditional Upper Rural Egypt.<br />

(Regional percentages are, of course, sensitive to sampling probabilities.)<br />

<strong>The</strong>re is a small, but very important, contradiction here: it was stated above<br />

that males outnu<strong>mb</strong>er females in the labor force more than three to one when<br />

the labor force is measured as closely as possible to international standards.<br />

A nu<strong>mb</strong>er of females consider themselves "earners" but do not actually fit into<br />

the pseudo definition of "in the labor force." Women are being categorized<br />

improperly as outside the labor force, or outside the "human force" when, in<br />

fact, they are making important contributions to household earnings. CAPMAS<br />

does not recognize, specifically, the earnings of housewives.<br />

<strong>The</strong> informal sector presents special measurement problems as well. <strong>The</strong><br />

distinction "informal" is hardly obvious, and without defining differences<br />

between clearly informal activities (street vending, for example) and real<br />

small-scale enterprises, inferences about the size of the informal sector are<br />

difficult to make. That there are many individual, small-scale, part-time and<br />

intermittent enterprises cannot be disputed, however. And overall, the<br />

nu<strong>mb</strong>er of income sources people have is higher than it would be with a more<br />

developed formal sector. Extra jobs have become an indispensable way to<br />

make ends meet.<br />

7 <strong>The</strong> question "How many days did you work last week?" resulted in an<br />

average of 6.1, well above the estimate of most countries. CAPMAS was<br />

skeptical that employees would be able to take a proper accounting of the<br />

nu<strong>mb</strong>er of hours worked the previous week.

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