Policy Briefs
What Is Driving the Decline in Social Insurance Coverage in Egypt? Understanding The Relative Role of Structural Change
No.
PB 118
Publisher
ERF
Date
November, 2023
In a nutshell
- There has been a secular decline in social insurance coverage rates for both wage and non-wage workers in Egypt since the mid-2000s.
- Although the decline in coverage spans the 2007-2021 period, it is most acute in the 2014-2017 sub-period.
- Only a small fraction of the decline can be attributed to major structural changes in the economy such as the contracting of employment in the public sector and in agriculture and the expansion in non-agricultural private employment.
- Structural changes across industries within private non-agricultural wage employment also account for only a minute fraction of the decline and structural change in non-wage non-agricultural employment would have in fact led to a slight increase in coverage rather than a decline.
- Accounting for the change in other characteristics of jobs and workers, such as firm size, occupation, sex, marital status, education, and job tenure also fails to explain the decline in coverage.The decline in coverage was most pronounced for wage workers in private service activities such as health and education, non-wage workers in food service, information, finance and business services, workers in micro and small establishments, workers with no education, single male workers, and workers with less than 4 years of job tenure.
- We conclude that the decline in coverage is not related to structural change or change in the composition of the workforce, but changes in the administration of the social security system that made it more costly to ensure low-paid workers and other policy measures that reduced the net value of coverage for these workers.
Research Fellows
Ragui Assaad
Professor and Freeman Chair for International Economic...
Authors
Sarah Wahby
PhD student of Public Policy, Humphrey School...