This book joins four papers prepared in the framework of the Egypt inequality study financed by the World Bank. The first paper prepared by Sherine Al-Shawarby reviews the studies on inequality in Egypt since the 1950s with the double objective of illustrating the importance attributed to...

We examine in this paper the transition from school to work and the transition to marriage among young men with at least a secondary education in Egypt, with particular attention to how the first transition affects the second. In examining the transition from school to work, we analyze the...

This paper provides relevant indicators and measurements useful for public policies seeking the expansion of equitable human development opportunities for Egyptian children and youth. To measure equitable access to opportunities, the authors use the Human Opportunity Index to examine the...

This paper examines whether domestic inflation spikes in Egypt during 2001-2011 were primarily the result of external food price shocks. To estimate the pass-through of international food price inflation to domestic price inflation, two different methodologies are used: a two-step regression...

This paper presents a detailed picture of how sustained growth in Egypt over 2005-2008 affected different groups both above and below the poverty line. This analysis, based on the Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Panel Survey conducted by Egypt’s national statistical agency,...

The paper proposes an alternative index of relative deprivation which allows for selection of the reference group and imperfect information, two central elements of modern theories of social justice. An application to real data and a simulation on artificial data illustrate the use and some...

The paper uses a range of methods to assess changes in income, poverty and income distribution between 2001 and 2002 in Kazakhstan. It is found that outstanding GDP growth has been translated into very modest growth in mean household income. However, both income poverty and inequality have...

The article develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid. The authors call this concept the income lever. Making use of tax and distributive theory, the...

“Growth is good for the poor” is a ubiquitous statement and one generally backed by theory, research and history. In the long-run, growth reduces poverty. Yet, growth in output - per se - is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for poverty reduction in the short-term. The paper...

The paper defines the Gini index as the sum of individual contributions where individual contributions are interpreted as the degree of diversity of each individual from all other members of society. Among various possible forms of individual contributions to the Gini found in the literature, we...