Targeting Multidimensional Poverty: Op-ed

By: Aisha Ghoneimy

Egypt is moving towards leaving no one behind, guaranteeing decent life for everyone across all governorates and villages; targeting multidimensional poverty in the midst of accelerated rate of population growth.

The Multidimensional Poverty seeks to capture the complexity and persistence of poverty beyond monetary deprivations by considering additional deprivations experienced by the poor; including access to education and basic infrastructure along with income or consumption at the $1.90 international poverty line.

The importance of measuring multidimensional poverty stemmed from the accuracy in providing a more complete picture of poverty through measuring multiple dimensions of deprivations of the poor for instance markets for basic needs and public goods may not exist.

Hence, complementing monetary with non-monetary information is a must to eradicate poverty from its roots causes.

Accordingly, measuring poverty with a single income or expenditure measure is necessary but not sufficient.

It is worth noting that monetary poverty does not include all forms of deprivation, as it is one of the dimensions of poverty, which is measured by the daily consumption rate of per capita income on the basis of purchasing power parity.

It measures the ability to meet the necessary basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, and other goods.

On the other hand, the non-monetary dimensions of poverty include deprivations in the areas of education and other basic infrastructure (i.e. water, sanitation, and electricity).

It also include deprivations in the areas of health, nutrition, and spatial security, given that public spending plays a major role in providing these services. It is difficult to measure them by monetary poverty approach.

Additionally, monetary poverty measure may give outward indicators of a narrow scope.

As such, Egypt targets eliminating multi-dimensional poverty with a broader and more comprehensive concept to ensure the sustainable elimination of poverty in all its aspects in order to provide a decent quality of life for every Egyptian Citizen; as the reduction in monetary poverty rates does not necessarily mean the elimination of non-monetary poverty.

In this regard, accelerated steps have been taken to eradicate poverty using multidimensional approach at all levels.

These steps include the launching of the presidential initiative “Decent Life” that becomes a pioneer model on the international map targeting multidimensional poverty, measuring poverty rate at governorates rates to explore different levels of poverty at micro levels covering villages and all marginalised areas.

This approach helps to better target the most vulnerable households and inpiduals, ensuring the availability and the efficiency as well as the sustainability of public services provided by the Government such as health care, education, infrastructure facilities and other basic needs and services

Most Importantly, Egypt targets providing decent and sustainable job opportunities that guarantee job stability and promotion, which ensures the continuity of income and its gradual increase along with the increase in Inflation.

In addition to the expansion of the establishment of sustainable green infrastructure and the establishment of new cities and neighborhoods with high-quality environmental buildings for inpiduals and households residing in slums and dilapidated private housing, which negatively affects the quality of their life and the environment.

These consolidated efforts come in line with the excessive rise in demand accompanied by high rate of population growth.

In-depth, the Presidential Initiative “Decent Life” promotes human rights and eradicates multi-dimensional Poverty, targeting 4,658 villages with total investments estimated at LE 700 billion.

This contributes to improving the life of more than half of the Egyptian population through setting an integrated developmental roadmap which its goals and pillars are consistent with the sustainable development goals of the United Nations.

This initiative lies at the heart of human rights and it was formulated in accordance with the national strategy for sustainable development and the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, noting that the initiative was granted by the United Nations as one of the best international practices for sustainable development goals.

The main goals of the initiative are advancing the economic, social and environmental levels of the neediest families in poor villages, empowering them to obtain all public services, secure job opportunities for these communities and maximizing their production capabilities in a way that ensures a decent life for them.

It also secures a comprehensive array of services and that include decent housing, health, education, culture, infrastructure, clean green environment and productive communities to ensure sustainable development in the targeted villages across all governorates.

"Decent Life Initiative" is a leading initiative in the Egyptian economic history, as it aims to eradicate poverty in all its monetary and non-monetary dimensions.

This can be achieved through the provision of healthy, safe housing and sustainable green infrastructure, schools, internet services, health care units, public infusions, mobile police units, banking services within the framework of expanding financial inclusion.

It will also provide access to finance for small and micro projects, where crafts, industries, various agricultural projects and other projects are characterized by high competitive advantages in each of the targeted villages at the level of the governorates.

Furthermore, it aims to promote industrial clusters and supply value chains, as well as creating sustainable job opportunities, ensuring the sustainability of generating incomes and raising the standard of living for inpiduals and households. 

From perspective of the political economy, Egypt is taking serious, decisive steps characterized by accountability and transparency in radical economic policies and decisions for the benefit of the citizen in the first place, in order to achieve comprehensive sustainable development that ensures the continuity of the benefits of development for current and future generations through time by building sound foundations for comprehensive development. 

The economic policies are well-coordinated and consistent with goals of radical structural reforms with a sustainable impact and not an apparent temporary impact, supported by broad social protection networks to accommodate all households and inpiduals with high and deep degrees of vulnerabilities to ensure the ability for them to move from the umbrella of social protection to the umbrella of employment and generating value-added to the economy as a whole. 

In addition to adopting the approach of involving citizens in decision-making and policies, which led to the successful implementation of policies and the increase in the effectiveness of their positive returns politically, socially, environmentally and economically, besides a unique political leadership in the governance of policy-making, transparency, political and social communication, accompanied by serious criteria in monitoring the performance and evaluating the implementation of policies and measuring achievement rates in specific periods of time, which resulted in the completion of many projects in very short period of time. Taking into consideration the standards of accountability to identify source of corruption and counter corruption.