Typical al Haraam. All the interesting bits left out but don't forget that their source is a department of the government not an independent statistics body as elsewhere - including India and Indonesia. You can guess what they have not printed. Births among the poor much higher than the rate of those of the lower middle and middle classes. Big differences between rural and urban areas with birth rates highest in the poorest rural areas of the poorest rural regions. Relative low birth rates amongst the educated and high for those poorly educated. Age of first birth much lower in rural and poor areas and therefore a long period of fertility. So the poor and ill educated living in regions where jobs are scarce and where schools and colleges are scarce and of lower standard are breeding at a great rate they cannot afford whilst the rich well educated with access to jobs and quality education are not. So the rich get richer and the poor have children and the births are in all the wrong places.
Compounding the problem is the ability of large, poor families, to feed their children and get medical treatment and its well documented that the children of the poorest areas, including Upper Egypt, suffer from very serious nutritional and medical problems which will affect their ability to work, increase their dependency on their family.
The real time bomb is the current number of young people many of whom are excluded from tertiary education and from jobs based on connections. The 1 year olds will have time to get angry about jobs.
This youth bulge, found most predominantly in the Middle East, North Africa and Iran is often seen as the cause of the revolutions and their demands for justice and economic improvement (jobs).
A large scale independent survey, a few years out of date, of young Egyptians - health, education etc is at
http://www.popcouncil.org/pdfs/factshee ... EFacts.pdf. The questions were non-controversial but some of the answers surprising (2/3rds of women in an 11,000 sample had been circumcised). As with everything in Egypt there was no regional breakdown which hides the disparity between the north and south, cities and rural But this is off the point.
A diagram is;
These kids aren't going anywhere soon and their job prospects will be grim until (if ever) the government can get the economy to grow at 9% and keep inflation down. For example, in upper Egypt, you would need to be a very optimistic young man or woman to think that the situation was going to improve during those years ahead when you would normally be laying down the foundations of a future - job, wife, house and kids.
About the only good thing about the age profile is that western medicine has get to have its effect on longevity and the welfare for the old is minimal. Therefore the current workforce, including young workers, will not have the crippling financial burdens, as in the west, to maintain the aged into their 90's or as long as taxes will provide.
Depending on how you interpret the population pyramid several decades of western funded birth control programs have either had an effect - which is dying out - or no effect at all.
