Egypt’s Ministry of Planning and Economic Development has issued a report on the Quality of Life Index as part of the Decent Life Initiative, providing an outline of the index’s calculation method.
Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said said the index is a quantitative tool that helps measure the impact of government efforts developing rural communities as part of the “Decent Life” initiative.
El-Said added that the index includes ten sub-indicators that express basic needs. These indicators reflect the rate of coverage relating to health units, drinking water services, sanitation services, and educational services by way of the density of classes. The indicators also cover the rate at which priority families’ needs are met for decent housing.
The minister added that the ten sub-indicators also include the rate of coverage relating to citizens with cash support, the percentage of paved roads, and the rate of coverage with natural gas network services. This is in addition to the rate of coverage regarding sports services and veterinary services.
The report presented an illustrative model for the method of calculating the quality of life index for a village, in terms of basic needs performance indicators. It also takes into account the unit of measurement, the index values, the situation before the interventions, the situation after the interventions, and the percentage of improvement.
The report said that the situation before government interventions concerning the coverage rates of health units in villages stood at 50%, but rose to 100% with the interventions in place. The same statistics were reported in terms of coverage rates for sports services, rate of paved roads, veterinary services, drinking water services, as well as the rate at which priority families’ needs are met for decent housing.
On the rate of coverage in sanitation services, the situation after the interventions reached 53.8%, the report said, while the rate of coverage in educational services relating to classroom density after the interventions reached 65%. The situation of the coverage rate of citizens with cash support after the interventions reached about 47%, and 53.8% for the coverage rate of natural gas network services.
The report added that the situation after the interventions regarding the quality of life index reached 82%, with an improvement of 44.1% compared to the prior situation.
El-Said recently approved investments of about EGP 4.4bn to implement projects under the presidential initiative. This includes the allocation of EGP 8m during fiscal year (FY) 2020/2021 that will go towards improving the quality of life in 375 of the neediest rural communities.
