Population and Human Capital Growth in
Egypt: Projections for Governorates to 2051
Anne Goujon, Huda Alkitkat,
Wolfgang Lutz, and Isolde Prommer
Project Report / February 2007
Presented at the Workshop on Population, Human Capital and Water in Egypt,
held at the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) on March 7, 2007
Cairo Demographic Center
International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis
www.iiasa.ac.at
Population and Human Capital in Egypt
Executive Summary
of a Project carried out by IIASA
in collaboration with the Cairo Demographic Center
Population Growth and Sustainable Development Challenges :
The combination of continued rapid population growth and severely constrained fresh water resources confronts Egypt with great challenges in her pursuit of sustainable development. The total population of Egypt increased from 22 million in 1950 to 75 million today, and is likely to increase to above 120 million by 2050 (see Figure 1). This more than five-fold increase in population size occurs in the context of fixed fresh water availability or even declining availability in the context of climate change. Already in 1997, Egypt fell below the international standard of water scarcity of 1000 m3/person/year. Over the coming decades this declining trend will continue toward highly critical levels. In addition, an otherwise much welcomed increase in economic growth tends to be associated with a much higher household water consumption as well as consumption for agricultural and industrial purposes.
Figure 1. Total population growth of Egypt, 1950-2051, historical trends, and three different future scenarios as discussed in the text.
What are Egypt’s options in this highly challenging context? There are clearly ways of coping with great water scarcity, yet still ensuring a decent quality of life for all citizens, but they are costly and require a highly-skilled population, in addition to high technological and financial inputs. Much research on this question has focused on the civil engineering and environmental modeling side of this equation. This study wants to complement our understanding through a focus on the population and human capital side of the equation. This is guided by the understanding that in this context, it is not only the sheer number of people and their distribution that matters, but also the skills of the people (what economists call the “quality” dimension) that are an important prerequisite for sustained economic growth and a sustainable management of natural resources.
This study applies a very powerful demographic methodology—called multi-state population projections—which was developed at IIASA and can model the dynamics of population change not only by age and sex, but also by additional dimensions such as the level of educational attainment. It also considers the fact that women with different levels of educational attainment tend to have different levels of fertility. Since the spatial distribution of the population greatly matters, and there are important differences in the levels of human capital among the different parts of Egypt, the analysis is carried out at the level of individual governorates. The data is based on the 1996 census and has been updated in terms of more recent trends with the help of the 2000 and 2005 Demographic and Health Surveys. The model is set up in a way that as soon as reliable data from the 2006 census becomes available at this level of disaggregation, the projections can be updated.
Three Scenarios for Future Fertility and Education
The empirical starting data provide the population by age, sex, and level of educational attainment in five categories (illiterate, can read and write, basic education, secondary education, and tertiary education) for 21 governorates and the Frontier region. This can be presented visually in the form of age pyramids with women on the right-hand side and men on the left, sorted by age with the youngest at the bottom, the colors indicating the level of educational attainment. Figure 2 shows an education-age pyramid for Egypt as a whole in 2001.
Unlike for all industrialized and an increasing number of developing countries which recently experienced strong fertility declines, the population pyramid for Egypt in 2001 still looks like a pyramid, with each age group smaller than the previous one. Figure 2 also shows that women are on average less educated than men and that younger cohorts are better educated than older ones.
Figure 2. Population pyramid by level of education for the whole of Egypt in 2001.
Projections of the future size and composition of the population by age, sex, and level of educational attainment require assumptions about future trends in fertility, mortality, and migration (and how they differ by level of education), as well as future trends in progression to higher educational attainment categories by age and sex, which is closely related to the frequently-used indicator of school enrolment rates. Different combinations of alternative assumptions on each of these parameters result in large numbers of scenarios. For a clearer picture, the following three main scenarios have been defined:
Constant Rates Scenario: All demographic and educational transition rates stay constant at the same level as in the base year. This also implies a constant fertility rate of slightly above three children per woman on average.
Goal Scenario: This assumes that nationally and internationally agreed goals will be met. In particular, it assumes that the national goal of reaching replacement level fertility by 2017 (with constancy thereafter) will be met, as well as the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal completion of basic education for all school-age boys and girls by 2015.
Trend Scenario: Assumes plausible continuations of recent trends in all parameters. Due to the slow pace of recent fertility declines, replacement level fertility under this scenario will only be reached in 2035, and fertility will then continue to decrease to 1.7 by 2050.
As can be expected, the difference among the three scenarios increases over time. Figure 3 shows that after 2020, the constant scenario is on a much higher trajectory of population size than the others. If all rates (including fertility) stay at their current levels, the population of Egypt would increase to 150 million by 2050 and an unimaginable 350 million by 2100. The more realistic trend scenario reaches 128 million in 2050, and if continued to the end of the century, it will peak at around 140 million and then start a slight decline. The goal scenario results in 120 million by 2050, followed by a slight decline thereafter. The latter is a consequence of the further improvement in the educational composition of women.
Figure 3. Trends in the size of the working-age population (men and women aged 15-64 in millions) by level of educational attainment according to the three scenarios for the whole of Egypt.
Comparing the three scenarios in terms of their consequences for the educational composition of the population, Figure 3 clearly shows that the population with secondary education will expand strongly in all three cases. The fact that this is happening even under the constant scenario is due to the great momentum of improvements in the stock of human capital. Education policies can only influence the school enrolment rates of young people; it then takes decades until the better-educated youngsters slowly move up the age pyramid to replace the less well-educated previous cohorts. In this sense much of the future trend in the educational attainment of the labor force is already embedded in today’s age structure by level of education and is, hence, a consequence of past education efforts. This great momentum of improvements in human capital is important to be kept in mind when assessing the returns to investments in education.
The difference between the three scenarios is most visible at the lower end of the education spectrum. While even under the constant scenario the proportion of illiterate adults decreases, the absolute number remains nearly constant as a consequence of population growth. For the goal scenario it is interesting to see that despite the assumed universal basic education by 2015, an illiterate population of working age will still exist until 2050, although much reduced. Again, these are the people who were of school age before universal basic education is assumed to be achieved.
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