Egypt: an economic geography The people of Egypt · 31
the following picture. From 1965/70 to 1995/2000 the birth rate dropped from
41.8 per cent to 26.4 per cent annually per 1,000 inhabitants. In the same time
span the mortality rate declined from 15 per cent to 6.4 per cent annually per
1,000 inhabitants. Despite this positive development Egypt will be confronted
with serious problems in the coming twenty to thirty years for demographic
reasons, for the population pyramid of the 1996 population census shows
that at the time 37.8 per cent of Egyptians were younger than 15 and that
the proportion of women of reproductive age (15–49) was rather high at 50.3
per cent of the total female population, while the proportion of persons over
60 years of age was only 5.8 per cent. Between 1960/65 and 1995/2000 the
life expectancy at birth increased from 46 to 66 years for men and from 49 to
70 years for women, while the fertility rate per woman dropped, and was 3.4
children in 1996/98 as compared to 4.41 ten years earlier (CAPMAS 2000).