According to an annual report conducted and published by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), Egypt’s birth rate has decreased from 28.6 per 1000 people in 2016 to 26.8 in 2017. Tarek Tawfik, the deputy health minister, has said that the population strategy currently set focuses on having, by 2030, a population of 112 million Egyptians instead of 128 million which will in turn “save around 200 billion Egyptian pounds specifically in insurance, health, and education”. The Ministry of Social Solidarity also launched a “Two is enough” program with a main aim of educating Egyptians in rural areas the importance of birth control – a concept that is widely recognized as religiously forbidden. Rania Fares, the ministry’s program coordinator, has said that the goal is to achieve a rate of 2.4 children per family in rural areas. “The importance of spacing child births will be stressed and suitable birth control methods will be provided”, said Fares. Experts, however, claim that the decrease in the birth rate is mainly a result of the current harsh economic conditions which have highly increased living costs and in turn left many…
Harsh Economic Conditions in Egypt Main Cause for Birth Rate Decrease
June 11, 2018
