# **Introduction**

Children’s access to human development opportunities today will determine to a large extent their country’s future development path. Today, income poverty among Egyptian children, the single largest group of the Egyptian population (more than one-third), is higher than for the entire population, and has been increasing during the past decade. Moreover, there is evidence that children living in poverty are more likely to be deprived of the most basic opportunities for human development – namely, health, education, labor skills, basic shelter, and sanitation – and less likely to lead healthy, productive lives and escape poverty when they are adults. As Nobel laureate James Heckman (2008) shows, early childhood interventions that improve health and social, emotional, and cognitive abilities enhance a wide range of outcomes later in adulthood (e.g., school achievement, labor productivity, and health status) and, moreover, reduce crime and prevent teen pregnancy. There is evidence that these kinds of interventions at the start of the life-cycle have the highest rates of return ( _vis-à-vis_ all other social programs), because they reduce the costs of expensive measures to alleviate problems later in life.<sup>2</sup> Hassine (2009) shows that inequality of opportunity accounts for 30-40 percent of total inequality of earnings. Moreover, a recent study (Rocco et al., 2011) finds that malnutrition in Egypt is one of the main factors behind chronic diseases in adults, and that those diseases cause sizeable reductions in employment, imposing major efficiency losses on the economy. In summary, there are both equity and efficiency reasons that justify the concern about the availability and equity of human development for Egyptian children and youth. This paper measures them for the first time.

The main objective of this paper is to diagnose whether public policies are expanding and allocating opportunities equitably, and identify which demographic and regional circumstances should be considered to improve targeting mechanisms. This paper measures the extent to which circumstances beyond the individual’s control feed into inequality of opportunities for the human development of children and youth. _Equality of opportunity_ means that a person’s chances to succeed in life (access to basic services, education, a quality job, and adequate consumption levels) should be unrelated to predetermined circumstances at birth such as gender, location of birth, and socioeconomic and demographic origin.<sup>3</sup> Comprehensive measurement of the levels and changes in inequality of opportunity in Egypt informs the policy debate in the search for a more equitable society. In addition, acting on reducing inequality of opportunity today might prove effective for reducing future inequality of outcomes in the medium and long term–such as income and employment status.

This paper aims to provide answers to the following questions: How unequal is the distribution of opportunities that are essential goods and services for the development of Egyptian children? To what extent has equality of opportunities advanced during the past decade? By how much have the urban-rural and inter-regional gaps in opportunities improved? Which sectors provide better access to opportunities for children in Egypt, and which sectors make it more challenging for children in adverse circumstances? Which demographic and location circumstances are most correlated with deprivation of basic development opportunities in Egypt?

To measure equitable access to opportunities, we use the Human Opportunity Index (HOI) to examine the evolution of 16 basic opportunity indicators grouped in four sectors: four HOIs linked to education, six to basic housing services, four to early childhood development, and three to nutrition and hunger. These 16 indicators cover human development milestones at the three stages

> 2 See Carneiro and Heckman (2003), Schweinhart (2004), Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (2007), Heckman and Masterov (2007), WHO (2007), Heckman (2008), and Kilburn and Karoly (2008). 3 See Roemer (1998), Barros et al (2008) and Molina et al (2010).

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