Estimation of Poverty in Greater Cairo: Case Study of Three 'Unplanned' Areas

This paper aims to evaluate the poverty situation in the unplanned areas in Cairo as a case study. The unplanned areas, which are considered low‐income areas, make up the majority of Cairo, and they have attracted the interest of policymakers and researchers because of their huge size and the political upheavals that have occurred since the 1990s. However, there have been no studies on poverty in these areas owing to a lack of data. The originality of this paper lies in employing three concepts of poverty: consumption‐based poverty, a multidimensional poverty index (MPI), and subjective poverty. By using these different concepts of poverty, this paper contributes to the understanding of the nature of poverty and the interrelationship between these three measures of poverty in Greater Cairo. The main finding is that the three types of poverty are different. Households can be poor according to the MPI measure or can consider themselves to be poor, even though they are not objectively poor on the consumption‐based measure. This implies that policies aiming at improving living standards in these areas should address and design strategies according to the types of poverty that are prevalent.