STRUCTURAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS A. V. KOROTAEV Doctor of Historical Sciences Yu. V. ZINKINA Keywords: Egyptian revolution, Arab revolution, demography, youth, unemployment, inequality, corruption In Egypt, the poor were less affected by the global rise in food prices than in most other third world countries, as the Mubarak administration took serious measures to protect them through a subsidy system. HOW THEY TRIED TO HELP THE POOR Currently, the food subsidy system in Egypt is divided into two types. The firstis subsidizing Baladi bread. Since 1989, the government has kept the price of this type of bread at 5 piastres* for a flatbread weighing 130 g. This type of subsidy is universal, i.e. any resident of the country has the right to buy 20 baladi flatbreads daily at a low (subsidized) price in state-owned cooperative stores1. The second type of subsidy is walkie-talkie cards. They allow families to purchase a certain amount of certain basic food items, such as sugar, vegetable oil, etc., on a monthly basis at a subsidized price. During a period of rapid growth in world food prices, including wheat, the Mubarak regime made heroic efforts to keep the price of baladi bread at the same level, and succeeded in doing so. Even in the midst of the crisis, any Egyptian could still buy 20 130 g tortillas a day for 1 pound (about 6 rubles) - more than 2 kg of bread! Thus, even those who lived on less than $2 a day were not in danger of starvation. What caused the violent mass protests of the population in the spring of 2008? The fact is that at that time, the Baladi bread subsidy system in Egypt began to work with increasing interruptions due to the fact that a significant part of the flour subsidized by the state was not used by bakeries for baking bread, but was resold on the" black " market, where a bag of flour cost more than 100 times more than the state price. Accordingly, bakeries produced significantly less baladi bread, which led to huge queues and strong discon ... Читать далее