AHEAD Forum

Qays Bousmah

Member

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 13

New ERF working papers: 3 studies on Egypt

Does Public Health Insurance Increase Maternal Health Care Utilization in Egypt?
Ahmed Shoukry Rashad, Mesbah Fathy Sharaf and Elhussien I. Mansour
ERF Working Paper No. 1076

Abstract
We assess the impact of health insurance on the utilization of maternal health care services in Egypt. A propensity score matching is used to control for baseline differences in the characteristics of the insured and uninsured women, to determine the difference in health care utilization between the two groups that is attributed solely to the health insurance coverage. The results yield that the national health insurance has a strong positive impact on most of the maternal healthcare indicators. Public health insurance coverage increases the likelihood of receiving antenatal care by about 7%, delivering in a public health facility by 8%, and the likelihood that a newborn receive vitamin A dose after delivery by 8.2%. However, women who are less educated, from a poor household, and rural regions, are less likely to be covered by a health insurance. The findings of this study would guide intervention measures that aim at improving health care utilization especially among the poor and other vulnerable groups.

Public Value Perspective for Gender Budgeting: Evidence from Egypt
Lobna M. Abdellatif, Mohamed Ramadan and Mohamed Zaky
ERF Working Paper No. 1075

Abstract
This paper proposes a conceptual framework that relates failure of progressing in gender equality to weakness of budgetary and political institutions. Whereas, the former drift budgetary allocation away from producing the required public values, the latter leads to failure of reconciling and shaping individual values to come up with informed budgetary objectives. Application on Egypt shows that gender values may be locked in the basic needs perspective and lack an informed governance framework to position them dynamically in the utilitarian set of objectives of the budgetary system. Fiscal transparency should inform the process of public values formation and level up budgetary objectives for gender. Additionally, tapping up all public assets and networking them with the budgetary exercise is an important responsibility for governments.

The Nexus between Informal Credit and Informal Labor for Micro and Small Enterprises in Egypt: Sources of Finance and Enterprise Informality: Evidence from MSE Surveys in Two Governorates
Mohamed El-Komi and Mona Said
ERF Working Paper No. 1074

Abstract
As a result of the economic meltdown in 2008, the hardest hit sector of the economy was the micro and small enterprises (MSE’s) sector. MSEs’ access to formal finance has been facing increasing restrictions, due to the adoption of more cautious lending strategies by both public and private banks. Hence, MSEs in Egypt still heavily rely on informal credit to finance their operations. This paper identifies the linkages between different sources of finance and their impact on informality of MSEs based on small scale surveys on credit and labor use in household businesses in villages in two governorates in Egypt.