Quality of life (QOL) studies have garnered significant attention recently, not only from the research community but also from public policy, governance, planning, and management sectors. These studies often emphasize the importance of spatio-geographical and socio-economic contextual factors related to QOL, well-being, and happiness, as well as their impact on social and spatial inequalities and social justice.
Enhancing the QOL of societies reflects the progress made toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as it lies at the core of sustainable development. A high level of QOL within a society can bolster economic entities and provide a prosperous, stable, and sustainable future for its citizens and future generations, which, in turn, enhances progress toward achieving the SDGs. Consequently, improving individuals’ QOL has become a top priority for countries and cities worldwide, especially in light of current global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change crises, and the ongoing war in Ukraine and its significant impact on the global economy and investment.
Egypt aims to continually enhance the QOL of its citizens through a series of successive socio-economic and political policies. These include the 2019 "Decent Life" initiative for rural development, Egypt’s Vision 2030 for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), and the national project for the development of the Egyptian family (2021-2023). Furthermore, the 2016 national program for economic and social reform and the development of fourth-generation cities across Egypt, including the new administrative capital city, are aimed at improving life quality, increasing residential areas, and absorbing the population surge in the country.
This interest in QOL aims to make cities more competitive and environmentally sustainable, thereby enhancing the QOL of their citizens in various aspects of life, such as education, health, living standards, job quality and opportunities, socio-economic opportunities, and residential and community satisfaction.
Quality of life (QOL) is a complex, multidimensional, and interdisciplinary phenomenon in its nature that is difficult to define, conceptualize, and measure. It has been debated in various areas of social sciences including sociology, psychology, economics, demography, and politics. In addition to environmental sciences, planning and development, human geography, urban and regional studies, medicine, and public health. The determinants of QOL vary in terms of conceptual foundations, dimensions, indicators, and units of analysis.
Read also: Healthcare Quality Management Trends in MEA
QOL embraces many concepts, such as happiness, life satisfaction, and well-being. In literature, they are sometimes used interchangeably. It is generally used to assess the overall well-being of individuals and the happiness and satisfaction of societies. But it should be noted here that QOL should not be confused with the “standard of living” notion, which is primarily based on income. However, the indicators of QOL include many aspects besides wealth and employment, such as the built environment (e.g., neighborhood conditions and resources), social resources (e.g., social belonging, family relations, community life and social support networks), social and gender equality, physical and mental health, housing/material well-being, education, work and productive activity, safety and security, and recreation and leisure. In addition, more abstract aspects such as political stability, human rights, freedom, and happiness are often related to QOL. These domains/aspects are at the core of SDGs, confirming the interlinkage between achieving a high level of QOL and delivering SDGs.
Although most scholars view QOL as a construct of separate areas of life, called domains, such as health, financial situation, job, housing, environment, and leisure, there is no agreement in the literature on a single specific definition or precise approach to define or evaluate QOL. There are also no clear criteria as to which aspects of society should be enhanced to improve life conditions.
Historically, QOL research stems from two rather opposing approaches: the Scandinavian “level of living” approach and the American approach. However, many argued that integrating both may give a comprehensive perspective of QOL.
To sum up, the Scandinavian approach is based on objective indicators to assess the QOL, while the American approach is based on subjective indicators. The former can be therefore observed and collected by other people such as income, years of schooling, housing characteristics, and the quality and availability of public services and utilities. Whereas the latter cannot be collected by another person as they refer to a person’s feelings such as their feelings about their family and society, their satisfaction with their residence place, and work conditions, as well as their perception and awareness toward society and social issues such as social protection, government reforms programs, and gender equality and women’s empowerment.
QOL studies either choose one of the previously mentioned approaches/dimensions or a combination of both. Combining both approaches is more recommended by many researchers, as they argue that both indicators are complementary to each other and lead to a comprehensive perspective of QOL. None of the two informational sources can be dismissed easily. Most influential contemporary approaches acknowledge the existence of a subjective-objective duality in QOL research. Therefore, QOL can be defined as a product of a set of complex objective and subjective indicators/factors, and one cannot improve QOL separately.
Read also: Analyzing Nigeria's Air Quality
According to the literature, the number of QOL domains, the related indicators, and the weights assigned to each remain ambiguous and incorporate complex-based relationships. They usually differ from one research to another. Furthermore, the question: How important is having good indicators under each domain for overall QOL? has been addressed by two different concepts namely, domain hierarchy and domain salience.
Since the focus in this study is on the QOL of Egyptian wage workers, indicators that reflect both job characteristics and job satisfaction were included in the model. In addition to three other domains namely, digital devices access/ICT use, gender equality and women empowerment, and community facilities and services. The first three domains reflect the economic and technological aspect/factors, while the fourth indicator reflects the cultural aspect toward gender equality and women’s empowerment, and the last one reflects the environmental/community aspect.
Economic Factors and Reforms
Between 2011 and 2022, Egypt faced unprecedented challenges both at national and regional levels. At the national level, Egypt experienced staggering population growth, with over 20 million births in this period. These and other factors led to political turmoil: millions of young Egyptians took to the streets in 2011 in a massive uprising demanding better standards of living, eradication of corruption, and more democratic reforms.
To address these challenges, the government began implementing economic reforms in 2014, including reducing fuel subsidies and redirecting those funds toward targeted cash assistance programs for the most vulnerable members of society. In 2016 the Egyptian government sought support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which resulted in a loan of US$12 billion. The loan was accompanied by a socioeconomic program aimed at achieving macroeconomic stability and improving the quality of life for Egyptians. The government intensified investment in infrastructure projects, as well as social expenditure, implementing major development projects and initiatives in education, health, housing, and utilities.
The reform of energy subsidies, in particular, played a large part in stabilizing the country’s economy. However, tax revenues remain insufficient and are heavily dependent on indirect taxes, specifically VAT. And because of the structural issues in the Egyptian economy-characterized by low productivity and a reliance on non-tradable, less sophisticated activities like wholesale, transportation, and construction-this has had a negative impact on the trade balance and reduced the competitiveness of Egyptian exports.
Read also: Challenges & Solutions: Egypt Air Quality
This macroeconomic environment has made the Egyptian economy more susceptible to exogenous shocks, due to its high dependency on imports for raw materials, intermediate goods, and investment goods, as well as its reliance on tourism, expats’ remittances, and revenue from the Suez Canal as the main sources of foreign currency.
In early 2022, Egypt faced a major challenge when the United States Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This led to a large exodus of portfolio investments, estimated at around US$21 billion. In March 2022 the Central Bank of Egypt devalued the Egyptian pound by almost 16 percent. At the end of October 2022, Egypt and the IMF agreed an additional loan of US$3.1 billion. As part of the agreement the government agreed to implement a durable flexible exchange rate. In November, the Central Bank of Egypt implemented a third devaluation of the Egyptian pound, causing a sharp decline in its value.
Education
Egypt’s pre-university education system is the largest in the MENA region, in terms of number of students and teachers. In 2019/2020, about 23.6 million students were enrolled in the system, with about 1,019,000 teachers. Despite achieving high enrollment rates in primary schools and a low dropout rate, Egypt is performing poorly on one of the most important indicators of educational quality: class size.
It is worth mentioning that in the year 2019/2020 the average class size across all education levels at public schools, responsible for almost 90 percent of enrollment, was 48.3 students. Despite the progress made, Egypt still ranks in the bottom decile of countries based on the percentage of students reaching the “Low International Benchmark” set by the TIMSS scoring scale.
Equity in Education | Mohamed Rizakllah | TEDxCairo
Health
Maintaining and improving the health of a population of over 104 million is a tremendous task, especially considering the population growth rate of 2.1 percent per year between 2010 and 2020, higher than the 1.8 percent rate of the previous decade. The Egyptian government succeeded in increasing life expectancy at birth over the past decade, from 69.9 in 2011 to 71.8 in 2018. In addition, there was significant progress in reducing the child mortality rate. For children under five this has fallen from 28.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2010 to 20.3 deaths in 2019.
Malnutrition and stunting in children remain big challenges for the government but there have been significant improvements. In 2008, almost one in three Egyptian children under the age of five were stunted, but in 2021 the percentage went down to 12.8 percent. Similarly, child wasting came down from 7 percent in 2008 to 3 percent in 2021.
Despite the increase in the ratio of doctors to inhabitants, there has been a decline in the number of doctors working in the public sector in recent years, falling from over 103,000 in 2016 to around 91,000 in 2020. A similar trend took place in the number of hospital beds. Over the past decade, there has been a 9.8 percent decline in the number of hospital beds in the public sector, from 98,319 in 2011 to 88,597 in 2020.
On the other hand, the private sector has seen a 30 percent increase in the number of hospital beds, from 25,287 in 2011 to 33,020 in 2020. Private clinics and pharmacies are the preferred choice as service providers for chronic and acute medical conditions; 53 percent of individuals with chronic conditions seek care at private clinics that offer specialist outpatient care, while 18.5 percent seek medical advice at pharmacies, and 11.5 percent receive care at government hospitals. For acute conditions, about 38 percent of individuals seek medical advice at pharmacies.
Poverty and Inequality
Poverty in Egypt has been increasing since the start of the twenty-first century. In FY 1999/2000 the poverty rate was 16.7 percent. By FY 2010/2011 it had risen to 25.2 percent. It continued to increase, reaching a peak of 32.5 percent in FY 2017/2018 due to the devaluation of the Egyptian pound in 2016. For the first time in the decade, the poverty rate dropped, to 29.7 percent in FY 2019/2020. The small decrease in 2019/2020 meant that around four million people were no longer living in poverty.
The Gini index, which measures inequality in distribution of per capita consumption, has barely changed since 2010. In the most recent year for which we have data, FY 2019/2020, Egypt’s Gini index stood at 29.0. This means there was almost no change in wealth distribution, whether through government interventions or through market or labor changes.
The latest Household Income Expenditure and Consumption Survey (HIECS) gives a clearer view of the living conditions of the poor in Egypt. Transfers, in cash or in kind, represent 23.7 percent of national average household income after wages. However, in rural areas this increases to 24 percent, of which around three-quarters were in cash and one-quarter in kind. The average household spends over one-third of its income on food. This is an indicator that jobs in bot...
Freedom and Prosperity
The 2022 Atlantic Council report, Do Countries Need Freedom to Achieve Prosperity?, showed that prosperity and freedom are highly correlated: the correlation coefficient between the indexes is 0.81. High scores for freedom are associated with high scores for prosperity, and low scores for freedom with low scores for prosperity.
Over the period covered by the Freedom and Prosperity Indexes (2006-21), Egypt consistently remained in the Mostly Unfree and Mostly Unprosperous categories. Its freedom score peaked at 46.6 in 2011, but then gradually decreased over the years, reaching 35.8, before slightly improving to 37 in 2021.
The UN Human Development Index (HDI) allows us to further examine the relationship between freedom and prosperity. In 2006, Egypt ranked 111 out of 177 countries. Progress stalled in 2011, and the country’s ranking fell to 113 (of 187).
The Egyptian government celebrated the launch of the UNDP 2021 HDI report as evidence of its success in improving citizens’ lives. However, the question arises as to whether freedom is also necessary for progress in human development.
| Year | Freedom Score | HDI Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | N/A | 111 (out of 177) |
| 2011 | 46.6 | Stalled |
| 2021 | 37 | N/A |
Popular articles:
tags: #Egypt
