The Coverage Gap in the Egyptian Social Insurance System During a Period of Reforms and Revolts

The coverage gap in terms of access to social security coverage in Egypt has been increasing over the last decades, particularly in the private wage sector, implying that more workers might not be financially secure in times of unforeseen events, sickness, disability and old age. This coverage gap has often been attributed to several shortcomings in the rules regulating the social insurance system, such as the high cost of participation in the social insurance system compared to the low pension amounts received during retirement years. This paper explores the following questions: (1) How long a worker who starts in the private non-agricultural wage sector needs to gain access to social insurance coverage? (2) Did the introduction of the 2003 labor law have any effects on the duration needed to get such coverage? (3) Did the duration to coverage change in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the January 25th revolution?. We use recently available data from the new round of the Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey of 2012 and survival analysis techniques, to model the duration to social insurance coverage in the private sector. This new data allows us to study the dynamics of social insurance coverage before and after the 2003 and 2004 laws; and to investigate whether the January 25th Revolution had any initial effects on workers’ access to social insurance coverage.