IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/539.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Dynamics of Poverty and Inequality in an Era of Economic Liberalization: The Case of Egypt

Author

Listed:
  • Shireen Al Azzawi

    (Department of Economics, Santa Clara University)

Abstract

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the dynamics of moving in and out of poverty and inequality in Egypt, utilizing a recent, nationally representative panel survey. It studies the dynamics of poverty using both measures of income and measures of consumption. This provides an opportunity to compare poverty measures and dynamics using these two related, but not identical measures of economic well being. It also shows the difference between urban and rural families, and the use of region specific poverty lines. Regression methods are used to identify the determinants of chronic and transitory poverty over this period in Egypt, and the determinants of moving between and within income groups. The ultimate goal of this paper is to devise and recommend a set of high impact short term policies with immediate measurable results as opposed to grander schemes.

Suggested Citation

  • Shireen Al Azzawi, 2010. "The Dynamics of Poverty and Inequality in an Era of Economic Liberalization: The Case of Egypt," Working Papers 539, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:539
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/539.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://bit.ly/2mif9NZ
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 1997. "What Can New Survey Data Tell Us about Recent Changes in Distribution and Poverty?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 11(2), pages 357-382, May.
    2. World Bank, 2007. "Arab Republic of Egypt : Poverty Assessment Update, Volume 1. Main Report," World Bank Publications - Reports 7642, The World Bank Group.
    3. Ravallion, Martin, 2001. "Growth, Inequality and Poverty: Looking Beyond Averages," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(11), pages 1803-1815, November.
    4. Fatma El-Hamidi & Mona Said, 2006. "Wage Inequality` Returns to Education and Gender Premia in MENA," Working Paper 271, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Sep 2006.
    5. Fatma El-Hamidi & Mona Said, 2014. "Gender-based wage and occupational inequality in the new millenium in Egypt," Journal of Developing Areas, Tennessee State University, College of Business, vol. 48(1), pages 21-41, January-M.
    6. Steckel, Richard H, 1990. "Poverty and Prosperity: A Longitudinal Study of Wealth Accumulation, 1850-1860," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 275-285, May.
    7. Mona Said, 2007. "The Fall and Rise of Earnings and Inequality in Egypt: New Evidence From the ELMPS, 2006," Working Papers 708, Economic Research Forum, revised 01 Jan 2007.
    8. World Bank, 2007. "Arab Republic of Egypt : Poverty Assessment Update, Volume 2. Annexes," World Bank Publications - Reports 7640, The World Bank Group.
    9. El-Laithy, Heba & Lokshin, Michael & Banerji, Arup, 2003. "Poverty and economic growth in Egypt, 1995-2000," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3068, The World Bank.
    10. Richard H. Adams, Jr., 2000. "Self-Targeted Subsidies: The Political and Distributional Impact of the Egyptian Food Subsidy System," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(1), pages 115-136.
    11. Wahba, Jackline, 2000. "Returns to education and regional earnings differentials in Egypt," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 25, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    12. Shashanka Bhide & Aasha Kapur Mehta, 2004. "Chronic Poverty in Rural India: issues and findings from panel data," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 195-209.
    13. Alia El Mahdi & Ali Rashed, 2007. "The Changing Economic Environment and the Development of the Micro and Small Enterprises in Egypt 2006," Working Papers 706, Economic Research Forum, revised 01 Jan 2007.
    14. Fatma El-Hamidi, 2007. "Have Economic Reforms Paid Off? Gender Occupational Inequality in the New Millennium in Egypt," Working Paper 338, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Feb 2008.
    15. Haddad, Lawrence & Ahmed, Akhter, 2003. "Chronic and Transitory Poverty: Evidence from Egypt, 1997-99," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 71-85, January.
    16. Adams, Richard Jr. & Page, John, 2003. "Poverty, Inequality and Growth in Selected Middle East and North Africa Countries, 1980-2000," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(12), pages 2027-2048, December.
    17. Jere R. Behrman & Nancy Birdsall & Miguel Székely, 2007. "Economic Policy Changes and Wage Differentials in Latin America," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(1), pages 57-97, October.
    18. Datt, Gaurav & Ravallion, Martin, 1992. "Growth and redistribution components of changes in poverty measures : A decomposition with applications to Brazil and India in the 1980s," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 275-295, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2015. "Endowments or Discrimination? Determinants of Household Poverty in Egypt," Working Papers 931, Economic Research Forum, revised Aug 2015.
    2. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2015. "Is there Feminization of Poverty in Egypt?," Working Papers 926, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2015.
    3. Hlasny, Vladimir & AlAzzawi, Shireen, 2019. "Asset inequality in the MENA: The missing dimension?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 44-55.
    4. Lobna M. Abdellatif & Mohamed Ramadan & Sarah A. Elbakry, 2017. "How Gender Biased Are Female-Headed Household Transfers in Egypt?," Working Papers 1126, Economic Research Forum, revised 08 Oct 2017.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2015. "Endowments or Discrimination? Determinants of Household Poverty in Egypt," Working Papers 931, Economic Research Forum, revised Aug 2015.
    2. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2015. "Is there Feminization of Poverty in Egypt?," Working Papers 926, Economic Research Forum, revised Jul 2015.
    3. Shireen AlAzzawi, 2013. "Did Trade Liberalization Benefit Female Workers? Evidence on Wage and Employment Effects from Egypt," Working Papers 787, Economic Research Forum, revised Oct 2013.
    4. Montalvo, Jose G. & Ravallion, Martin, 2010. "The pattern of growth and poverty reduction in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 2-16, March.
    5. Kalwij, A.S. & Verschoor, A., 2004. "How Good is Growth for the Poor? The Role of Initial Income Distribution in Regional Diversity in Poverty Trends," Other publications TiSEM 199ed5a4-ad69-4cf9-81d7-b, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. Sami Bibi & Mustapha K. Nabli, 2009. "Income Inequality In The Arab Region: Data And Measurement, Patterns And Trends," Middle East Development Journal (MEDJ), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(02), pages 275-314.
    7. Azevedo, Joao Pedro & Inchauste, Gabriela & Olivieri, Sergio & Saavedra, Jaime & Winkler, Hernan, 2013. "Is labor income responsible for poverty reduction ? a decomposition approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6414, The World Bank.
    8. Kalwij, Adriaan & Verschoor, Arjan, 2007. "Not by growth alone: The role of the distribution of income in regional diversity in poverty reduction," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(4), pages 805-829, May.
    9. Hala Abou-Ali & Hesham El-Azony & Heba El-Laithy & Jonathan Haughton & Shahid Khandker, 2010. "Evaluating the impact of Egyptian Social Fund for Development programmes," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(4), pages 521-555.
    10. Yerrabati, Sridevi, 2022. "Does vulnerable employment alleviate poverty in developing countries?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    11. Bui, Tuan & Nguyen, Cuong & Pham, Phuong, 2015. "Poverty among ethnic minorities: transition process, inequality and economic growth," MPRA Paper 68924, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Adriaan Kalwij & Arjan Verschoor, 2005. "A Decomposition of Poverty Trends Across Regions: the Role of Variation in the Income and Inequality Elasticities of Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2005-36, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Bluhm R & Crombrugghe D.P.I. de & Szirmai A., 2013. "The pace of poverty reduction - A fractional response approach," MERIT Working Papers 2013-051, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    14. Meng, Xin & Gregory, Robert & Wang, Youjuan, 2005. "Poverty, inequality, and growth in urban China, 1986-2000," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 710-729, December.
    15. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    16. Erina Iwasaki & Heba El-Laithy, 2013. "Estimation of Poverty in Greater Cairo: Case Study of Three ‘Unplanned’ Areas," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 25(2), pages 173-188, June.
    17. Vincenzo Lombardo, 2011. "Growth and Inequality Effects on Poverty Reduction in Italy," Rivista italiana degli economisti, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2, pages 241-280.
    18. Tarlok Singh, 2022. "Economic growth and the state of poverty in India: sectoral and provincial perspectives," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 1251-1302, August.
    19. Bluhm, Richard & de Crombrugghe, Denis & Szirmai, Adam, 2018. "Poverty accounting," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 237-255.
    20. Ngepah, Nicholas & Espoir, Delphin Kamanda, 2018. "Binding constraints of economic growth on poverty: A dynamic panel data analysis," MPRA Paper 92136, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Oct 2018.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:539. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.