ABSTRACT
Introduction Social policy measures are important means to reduce poverty and raise the standard of living of low-income people in general. However, since there are budget constraints for the government, priorities have to be set in allocating government expenditure for different social measures. These priorities may be set by the government according to its own criteria or may be set according to the interest of low-income people as revealed by their expenditure patterns; i.e., giving higher priorities to those social services representing higher relative shares in the budget of low-income people. This paper espouses the second alternative which is to set a scale of priorities that serves the interest of low-income people, including the poor as a subgroup. Thus, the objective of this study is to assess social policy priorities set by the government with respect to the needs of low-income people in Egypt. The social policy measures examined in this context are government expenditures on food subsidy, education,and health. The two latest Household Expenditure Sample Surveys (HESS), which were carried out in 1990/91 and 1995/96, were used to analyze the expenditure pattern of the low-income people on food subsidy, education and health vis-à-vis the Egyptian government’s expenditure pattern on these three items.
