Heba El-Laithy

Professor of Statistics at Cairo University’s Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University

Dr. Heba Farida Ahmed Fathy El-laithy is currently a Professor of Statistics at Cairo University’s Faculty of Economics and Political Science. She headed the statistical department at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, from 2009-2012. She is a consultant of CAPMAS for poverty and living standards measurements. She is specialized in micro data analysis and Socioeconomic and Social impact evaluation for development programs. She received her PHD Degree from Sussex University in United Kingdom. Dr. El-laithy has a strong background in statistical analysis. She is a key poverty and inequality expert who has contributed her expertise to several poverty assessments and poverty alleviation program evaluations in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Rwanda, authoring and co-authoring seminal reports on poverty, inequality, poverty alleviation and social safety net development in MENA region for governments, research centres and national and international organizations such as UNDP, WORLD BANK, ESCWA and ECA. She also developed two toolkits for measuring inequality for Arab countries and Africa. Dr. El-laithy has published papers on issues including the gender dimension of poverty, social risk management, and monetary poverty, multidimensional poverty and food security, equality of opportunity for children as well as the middle class in Egypt: size, trends, and profile. She was the team leader for several reports on “The Status of Poverty and Food Security in Egypt”, “Poverty in Syria” Poverty in Lebanon” and many others. She led the team for developing poverty map for Egypt, using household Income, Expenditure and Consumption Survey 2017/18 and 2019/20 and Population and housing Census 2017. Since 2015, she developed targeting mechanisms for new cash transfer programs of Ministry of Social Solidarity (Takaful and Karama), based on Geographical Targeting and Proxy Means Testing.