Economy of Egypt - Statistics

Statistics

According to the 2005 Household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey (HIECS), estimated per capita poverty lines vary across the regions. Data from a World Bank and Ministry of Economic Development poverty assessment based on comparisons between actual expenditures (and the cost of a consumption basket securing 2470 calories per day per person), shows that individual Egyptians who spent less than EGP 995 per year in 2005 are considered extreme poor, those who spent less than EGP 1423 per year are poor and those who spent less than EGP 1853 per year are near poor.

Overall about 44.4% of the Egyptian population are in the range of extreme poor to near poor:

• 21% of the Egyptian population was near poor, meaning that about 14.6 million Egyptians can obtain their basic food requirements in addition to some basic services.
• 19.6% of the Egyptian population was poor, meaning that about 13.6 million Egyptians (one out of every five) had consumption expenditure below the poverty line and could not therefore obtain their basic food and non-food needs.
• 3.8% of the Egyptian population was extreme poor, meaning that about 2.6 million of the Egyptian poor could not obtain their basic food requirements even if they spent all their expenditure on food.

Poverty has a strong regional dimension in Egypt and concentrates in Upper Egypt region, both urban (18.6%) and rural( 39.1), while metropolitan areas are the least poor (5.7%). The government is currently employing recently completed poverty map as tool for geographic targeting of public resources.

To be completed soon: