Government wants to curb population growth

Text by: Alexandre Buccianti

The Egyptian government has just adopted a series of muscular measures aimed at limiting births in a country whose population has exceeded 100 million inhabitants without counting the 10 million of the diaspora.

Publicity

From our correspondent in Cairo,

The measures are primarily economic . The Prime Minister announced that subsidies and pensions for the poorest families will now be limited to two children for newborns. In a country where, according to official figures, the poverty rate fell from 28 to 32% of the population in 2018, the decision is likely to hurt very much.

Subsidy cards make it possible to buy bread and various basic necessities that the third child will be deprived of at very low prices. Pensions for the most disadvantaged are also affected. They were calculated based on the number of family members. From now on, the third newborn will have no pension.

A family planning campaign

Family planning had been neglected in the aftermath of the uprising against ex-President Mubarak in 2011 before being practically abandoned when the Muslim Brotherhood took power. This had resulted in a population explosion with growth of almost 3% per year. For the past three years, family clinics - the word planning has been deleted - have seen their budgets more than double and their number increased substantially.

Doctors and nurses provide free medical and especially gynecological care in working-class or informal neighborhoods as well as in villages. At the same time, the government launched a policy promoting the employment of women. It currently represents less than a quarter of the workforce, assuming that an active woman has fewer children.

A time bomb

Population growth has been compared, by officials, to a time bomb that can do as much harm as terrorism. Experts say that you need at least two points of economic growth to balance one point of population growth.

Egypt is today at 5.5% economic growth. Even at 6%, it will take years to catch up and build the necessary schools, hospitals and HLMs. The good news is that the measures have started to bear fruit. In 2019 the number of inhabitants increased by less than 2% in Egypt.

► Read also: Why is Egypt better and the Egyptians worse?

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