Recent Trends of Fertility in Egypt

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Recent Trends of Fertility in Egypt

• Henriette Engelhardt
• Vienna Institute of Demography
• Task Force Meeting on
• Population, Human Capital and Water in Egypt
• IIASA, Austria
• August 9-10, 2004

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• Roadmap
• Development of fertility
• Explanations of stalled fertility decline
• Data
• Empirical evidence
• Age misreporting
• Summary

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Total fertility rate per women in Egypt
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• Stalled fertility decline in Egypt
• Eltigani (2003) analysed, whether the recent
  fertility stalling is because of the stalling in
  TFR of particular population segments.
• In particular, members of the low socioeconomic
  class are expected to change their reproductive
  behaviour only if there is structural change
  (i.e., improvement) in their socioeconomic
  conditions.
• Descriptive results indicate that the
  reproductive behaviour of women from high and
  middle class households seem to be responsible
  for stalling of the TFR.

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• Alternative explanation for stalled fertility
  decline
• TFR Average number of births a women would have
  if she were to live through her reproductive
  years and bear children at each age at the rates
  observed in a particular year.
• Bongaarts and Feeney (1998)
• TFRi TFRi (1 - ri)
• TFRi total fertility at order i in the absence
  of changes in timing
• ri change in the mean age at childbearing of
  order i
• If childbearing is postponed and, subsequently,
  the mean age at childbearing increases, the
  observed total fertility rate is lower than in
  the absence of such timing changes.
• Thus, the observed stalling of total fertility in
  Egypt can also be caused by a change in the
  timing of first and subsequent births.

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• Data
• Egypt Demographic and Health Surveys (EDHS)
• Nationally representative surveys of ever-married
  women between ages of 15 and 49
• 1992 EDHS 9,864 respondents from 10,760
  households
• 1995 EDHS 14,779 respondents from 15,567
  households
• 2000 EDHS 15,573 respondents from 16,957
  households

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Age-specific fertility and total fertility rates
of women in Egypt (15-49)
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Trends in the mean age at marriage and in the
mean age at birth among ever married women
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Mean age at birth calculated from the birth and
exposure frequencies for the three years
proceeding the survey
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Observed and tempo adjusted total fertility rate
per women in Egypt
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Observed total fertility rate by parity
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity one
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity two
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity three
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity four
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity five
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity six
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity seven
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Observed and tempo adjusted fertility rate at
parity eight
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Distribution of Ever-Married Women by Single Year
of Age
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Distribution of Ever-Married Women by Single Year
of Age and Education, 2000
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Distribution of Ever-Married Women by Single Year
of Age and Urban-Rural Residence, 2000
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Distribution of Ever-Married Women by Single Year
of Age and Place of Residence, 2000
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Quality of age-reporting Index for measuring
digit preferecnde of 0 and 5 and age heaping
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Whipples Index for age distributions of
ever-married women aged 15-49
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• Summary
• Stalling of fertility decline can only be found
  in grouped data.
• When using ungrouped data no stalling of
  fertility decline.
• When looking at the TFR there seems to no tempo
  effect since the mid of the 1990s.
• When looking at parity specific TFRs there seems
  to be a tempo effect which decreases by partiy.
• Total fertility for partiy 1, 2 and 3 is
  increasing since 1990.
• Total fertility for higher parities is decreasing.

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• However, ...
• To assess the tempo effect one should take care
  of age misreporting.
• This could be done by concentrating on
  respondents who reported the year of birth. This
  answer seems to be more valid than the
  information on the age of the respondent.

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Fertility indicators of ever married women in
Egypt
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Total fertility rate by place of residence
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Total fertility rate by highest educational level