Egypt Has the Eighth Highest Birth Rate in the World

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) has shared some rather large numbers when it comes to Egypt's population, a series of revelations that are simultaneously alarming yet unsurprising given the trajectory we've been on for the past few decades. Namely, that Egypt's population has reached 102,170,000 people, with one birth happening every 14 seconds - the eighth highest birth rate in the world. That's four births a minute, or 255 births every hour, or 6,000 births a day. Don't even try to calculate how many Facebook posts each birth creates - some numbers are just too big to handle.

Cairo is the governorate with the largest population with 10.5 million people, while South Sinai has the smallest population with 111,600.

Although the birth rate is high compared to the rest of the world, the number of births has actually decreased. There were 2.3 million births in 2020, which is a drop of 72 thousand compared to 2018 and 2019. Marriages and divorces also dropped, with only 876 thousand marriage contracts being issued in 2020, compared to about 927 thousand in 2019. Meanwhile, there were only about 222 thousand divorce cases in 2020, compared to about 237 thousand divorce cases in 2019.