Policy and Strategic Priorities for Egypt to Reap its Demographic Dividend

Egypt’s population program began in the early 1970s and was very successful in bringing down the country’s total fertility rate (TFR), the mean number of children a woman will have by age 50. Key investments in reproductive health and family planning (FP), as well as women’s empowerment, contributed to an impressive decline in the country’s TFR from 4.5 to 3.0 between 1988 and 2008. Egypt’s population will continue to grow in the foreseeable future. For Egypt to reap its demographic dividend, the authors present six policy and strategic priorities that - if well implemented - should yield the greatest reduction in fertility. The six priorities are: increasing the contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) - the central priority; reducing school dropouts; increasing the female labor force participation rate (LFPR); delaying age of marriage; leveraging social protection programs; and improving the governance of the population program.