# **Social Insurance Fund contributions**

Social Insurance Fund contributor status is directly observed in the HIECS (for all those individuals who answer the module capturing their labor market participation). We attribute to each individual making pension contributions a share of total household income from wages that is equivalent to total household income from wages divided by the total number of wage earners in the household. We create from each individual’s wage income a “basic wage” variable equivalent to 25 percent of total wage income.<sup>28</sup> Basic wages (so defined) are then multiplied by statutory contribution rates (40 percent) to estimate individual pension contributions. The goal is to attribute the right magnitude of pension contributions to each household with at least one contributor.

Cumulative HIECS Social Insurance Fund contributions are then scaled down—individual by individual—by the same ratio of cumulative _personal income taxes_ we expect to allocate in HIECS divided by the _cumulative estimated personal income tax_ taken from HIECS as estimated above. Budgeted Social Insurance Fund contributions were not available, so we scaled total Social Insurance Fund contributions based on our overestimate of another revenue-side fiscal instrument. The goal in generating this scaling—as before, for personal income taxes—is to estimate a cumulative Social Insurance Fund contributions pool in HIECS that is commensurate with the amount of disposable income in HIECS (relative to national accounts).

# **Direct transfers**

Takaful and Karama were pilot programs in 2015; HIECS 2015 does not directly identify beneficiaries of either program. Instead, the team implemented a proxy-means test based on a means function directly within HIECS 2015 that replicated as closely as possible the actual means function and proxy means test used in the field to identify Takaful and Karama beneficiaries.<sup>29</sup> The implementation of the proxy means test within HIECS was calibrated so that each governorate represented in HIECS absorbs the same number of beneficiaries and benefits as confirmed in administrative totals.<sup>30</sup>

# **Tamween program**

Egypt’s food ration program delivers to each beneficiary household a cash credit in the amount of LE 15 per person per month that can be used at family stores for the purchase of 21 basic food necessities. Food ration beneficiary status in the HIECS 2015 is directly observed through the module that records purchases using the food ration card made by households: any household purchasing any positive amount of any good available for purchase with the food ration card is assumed to receive a transfer in the amount of LE 15 per household member per month.

The food benefit received by the households is expanded to include an estimate of the value of the Baladi bread (and bread points for unconsumed bread) that the household receives. From the expenditure data in the HIECS 2015, we use a 5 piaster per loaf transformation to estimate the number of loaves of Baladi

> 28 The estimate was obtained from discussions with the Ministry of Finance. There are no other data available that could allow estimating a basic wage share of total wages at further disaggregated levels.

> 29 Following the programs’ application form, the predictive eligibility model in the HIECS used the following predictors of household consumption: number of members, number of rooms in the residence and dwelling characteristics (access to water, sanitation, construction materials, and so forth); ownership of food smart card; access to electricity; and ownership of assets (cars, smartphone, internet access, refrigerator, and so forth). 30 Takaful and Karama Program Progress Summary June 17, 2017.

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