Fighting poverty is impossible without crucial information about the poor themselves, such as where and how they live, and their needs. Better measurement and a wider understanding of poverty are essential to ensure efforts to help the poor are well directed and efficient. Since 2000, the World Bank has funded studies to analyze poverty in 62 countries.

In Egypt, the government had long been committed to improving conditions for its poorest people, but a lack of reliable and widely accepted poverty data made it difficult to plan the best approach. To get the numbers right and establish a basis for action, Egypt's Ministry of Planning during the late 1990s asked for World Bank help with its first comprehensive poverty study.

The results changed some long-held beliefs, in particular that poverty rates were closely linked to whether people lived in rural or urban areas in Egypt. Instead, regional and geographical disparities—in particular the fact that most of Egypt's manufacturing, construction and trading takes place in metropolitan and Lower Egypt—emerged as more important in explaining poverty rates.

Bank and government staff worked together on the study, which was finished in 2002. It analyzed poverty trends, and the impact of economic growth and public policies on the poor.

Relying on surveys of household incomes, spending and consumption, the study went beyond previous assessments by taking into account problems caused by regional variations in prices, and the number and age of the people in each household.

The study found that between 1996 and 2001, poverty rates rose in both urban and rural areas in Upper Egypt. But over the same period, poverty rates declined in Egypt's four main cities—Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Port Said—and in the Nile Delta Region in Lower Egypt.

It emerged that Upper Egypt, an elevated region in the country's south, was home to 40 percent of the country's population, but 70 percent of its poor people.

The study also found a direct link between a lack of education and poverty. More than 46 percent of poor people were illiterate, and 40 percent had only a basic education or less. Since experience suggests poverty rates decrease significantly when education levels rise, improving education access and quality should be a cornerstone of the fight against poverty in Egypt.

With widespread acceptance of the study's results, the government can now focus on reducing regional disparities, especially through investments in Upper Egypt.

The World Bank too is sharpening its regional focus in Egypt. With better understanding of the factors behind poverty, the Bank is focusing on ways to better target school construction and education subsidies to poorer regions in Egypt. The survey results are also being used to prepare a more geographically focused country assistance strategy, which will detail the opportunities for the World Bank to support Egypt's poverty reduction efforts over the next three years.