Abstract
<p style="border:solid thin black;"> Slow Fertility Transition Project In Egypt 2004 </p>
This research is motivated by the slow pace of fertility decline in Egypt in the period since 1992. Following relatively rapid decline in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Egyptian fertility decline slowed down during the latter part of the 1990s. The 2000 Egypt Demographic and Health Survey [EDHS] provided an estimate of the Total Fertility Rate [TFR] - births per woman over a reproductive career - of roughly 3.5 births for the period 1997-2000, with the levels in some segments of the population (e.g. rural Upper Egypt) substantially higher. The 2003 Egypt Interim Demographic and Health Survey [EIDHS] indicates that the decline resumed again after 2000, with the TFR during the period 2000-2003 estimated at 3.2 births (El-Zanaty and Way 2004), roughly one-quarter birth lower than the 2000 EDHS estimate. While this represents a substantial decline in the three-year intervening period, at 3.2 the TFR remains one birth above replacement level. Moreover, the TFR in 2000-2003 was 3.6 in rural areas, 3.8 in Upper Egypt, and 4.2 in rural Upper Egypt. Clearly Egypt as a whole remains some distance from replacement-level fertility, with certain segments of the
population as much as two births above replacement.
This research is intended to benefit policy makers and program managers in Egypt by identifying those factors that encourage adoption of the two-child norm and those factors that appear to favor continuing attachment to three or more children. With this knowledge, mass media activities, as well as the counseling of women and couples, can focus more effectively on the key factors that might expedite further progress towards more universal acceptance of the two-child norm.
The project objectives are encapsulated in the following four questions:
• What is the current status of fertility in Egypt in relation to the goal of replacementlevel fertility?
• What is the nature of current childbearing desires? Why do many Egyptian women wish to have three or more births?
• What are the prospects for further fertility decline, in particular as determined by the younger cohorts who have just started their reproductive careers or will start soon?
• Given the answers to the preceding three questions, what policies and programs might facilitate more rapid fertility decline in Egypt?
With these project objectives and the prospective orientation, three sub-groups of the population are of interest:
(i) Married women in the prime reproductive years, with a special focus on women that have two children or less (and therefore can limit their fertility to two children). With this group, key questions are whether they want more than two children, and, if so, why. How does having further children, or not having further children, fit into their
strategies for maintaining and improving the welfare of their household? Why is it that many in this group wish to have further children, and what considerations might alter
those aspirations?
(ii) Young unmarried women and men. In demographic terms these are large sub-groups, and their future reproductive choices will determine the trajectory of fertility decline in Egypt. What are their fertility goals, and how do these fit with their other aspirations? What value do they place on marriage and childbearing, and how are these values reconciled with their concerns about economic survival? Do young women and men have divergent views on these matters?