The Puzzle of Middle Class and Growth in Egypt (1990-2008)

Abstract

The study seeks to trace the missing connection between the middle class and growth in Egypt. The research is assessing whether distributional changes were in favor of the poor before the Arab spring. Based on the methodology of Ravallion and Chen (2003), Kakwani and Pernia (2000), and Kakwani et al. (2003) using a grouped data, the paper generates the three indices to test whether distributional changes were indeed pro-poor during the period (1990-2008), that should be correlative with the size of the middle class. The middle-class puzzle in Egypt has followed the path of bulging in size under certain thresholds even if growth was not in favor of the poor.