Demographics of Egypt
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| Economy |
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| Holidays |
| Languages |
| Human rights |
| Poverty |
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Egypt is the most populous country in the Arabic-speaking world and the second-most populous on the African Continent. Nearly 100% of the country's 78 million people live in three major regions of the country: Cairo and Alexandria and elsewhere along the banks of the Nile; throughout the Nile delta, which fans out north of Cairo; and along the Suez Canal. These regions are among the world's most densely populated, containing an average of over 3,820 persons per square mile (1,540 per sq. km.), as compared to 181 persons per sq. mi. for the country as a whole.
Small communities spread throughout the desert regions of Egypt are clustered around oases and historic trade and transportation routes. The government has tried with mixed success to encourage migration to newly irrigated land reclaimed from the desert. However, the proportion of the population living in rural areas has continued to decrease as people move to the cities in search of employment and a higher standard of living.
People
The Egyptians are a fairly homogeneous people. Ethnically and culturally, North African and Eastern Mediterranean influences are more predominant in the north, while the south which bears the same influences is also home to people related to Nubians and Africans further southeast in the land encompassing modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. Many theories have been proposed regarding the origins of the Egyptians, but the most widely accepted based on the scientific evidence is that prehistoric Egyptian society was formed through a mix of North and Northeast African, as well as Southwest Asian peoples who moved to the Nile Valley after the Ice Age. By 6000 B.C., organized agriculture had appeared in the Nile Valley.
Egypt has endured as a unified state for more than 5,000 years, and archaeological findings show that primitive tribes lived along the Nile long before the dynastic history of the pharaohs began. Egyptians take pride in their pharaonic heritage and in their descent from what many consider mankind's earliest civilization. The Classical Arabic word for Egypt is Misr (Masr in Egyptian Arabic), which appears in many ancient Semitic languages and originally connoted "civilization" or "metropolis".
The bulk of modern Egyptian society still maintains a homogeneous genetic tie to ancient Egyptian society since the predynastic period, which has always been regarded as rural and most populous compared to the neighboring demographics. The Egyptian people have spoken only languages from the Afro-Asiatic family (previously known as Hamito-Semitic) throughout their history starting with Old Egyptian to modern Egyptian Arabic (Masri).
Ethnic minorities include other established communities, namely a small number of Bedouin Arab nomads in the Sinai and eastern and western deserts, as well as some Nubians clustered along the Nile in Upper (southern) Egypt who are estimated to be about 0.8% of the population. Egypt was host to many foreign communities during the colonial period, such as Greeks, Italians, Syrians, and Armenians, though most left following the political developments that swept the country in the 1950s. The country still hosts some 90,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mostly Palestinians and Sudanese.
The literacy rate in modern Egyptian society is about 57% of the adult population. Education is free through university and compulsory from ages six through 15. Rates for primary and secondary education have strengthened in recent years. Ninety-three percent of children enter primary school and about one-quarter drop out after the sixth year; in 1994-95, 87% entered primary school and about half dropped out after the sixth year. There are 20,000 primary and secondary schools with some 10 million students, 13 major universities with more than 500,000 students, and 67 teacher colleges. Major universities include Cairo University (100,000 students), Alexandria University, and the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar University, one of the world's major centers of Islamic learning.
Egypt's vast and rich literature constitutes an important cultural element in the life of the country and in the Arab world as a whole. Egyptian novelists and poets were among the first to experiment with modern styles of Arabic literature, and the forms they developed have been widely imitated. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was the first in the Arabic-speaking world to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Egyptian books, films, and music are available and well-known throughout the Middle East.
Statistics
Population: 77,505,756 (July 2005 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 33% (male 13,106,043; female 12,483,899)
15-64 years: 62.6% (male 24,531,266; female 23,972,216)
65 years and over: 4.4% (male 1,457,097; female 1,955,235) (2005 est.)
Population growth rate: 1.78% (2005 est.)
Birth rate: 23.32 births/1,000 population (2005 est.)
Death rate: 5.26 deaths/1,000 population (2005 est.)
Net migration rate: -0.22 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2005 est.)
Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.02 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.74 male(s)/female
total population: 1.02 male(s)/female (2005 est.)
Infant mortality rate: 32.59 deaths/1,000 live births (2005 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 71 years
male: 68.5 years
female: 73.62 years (2005 est.)
Total fertility rate: 2.88 children born/woman (2005 est.)
Nationality:
noun: Egyptian(s)
adjective: Egyptian
Ethnic groups: Egyptians 98%, Nubians 0.8%, Other ( Bedouin Arabs, Berbers, Beja, Roma, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Magyarab 1.2%)
Religions: Muslim (mostly Sunni) 94%, Coptic Christian and other 6%
Languages: Arabic (official), Egyptian (Coptic), English and French widely understood by educated classes
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 57.7%
male: 68.3%
female: 46.9% (2003 est.)