Poverty and inequality in Egypt between 1974 /1975 and 1995 /1996: The sensitivity of the poverty levels to the choice of the concept of poverty, the poverty measure, the unit of analysis, and the poverty line

This dissertation assessed and measured changes in the poverty levels in Egypt between 1974/75 and 1995/96 and investigated the sources of those changes in order to determine whether they resulted from economic growth or changes in the distribution of consumption expenditure among households and individuals. Another objective of the study was to examine the sensitivity of the results obtained to the choice of the analysis unit (individuals vs. households), the choice of the poverty measure, which concept of poverty is used (relative vs. absolute), and the choice of poverty lines.;In this study, we estimated parameterized Lorenz curves for households' and individuals' grouped data. Poverty indexes were derived from the estimated Lorenz curves, and changes in the poverty levels were decomposed to their growth and distributional components. The study used three poverty measures (head-count, poverty-gap and severity of poverty) and applied multiple poverty lines to both individuals' and households' data. Two concepts of setting poverty lines were applied---relative and absolute. The Gini inequality index was also calculated for each data set. Results indicated some degree of sensitivity of the poverty levels to the choice of the concept of poverty, the unit of analysis, the poverty measure, and the poverty line. The sources of the changes in the poverty levels were also identified.