The Egyptian population reached 104.2 million, of which 94.7 million are living in the country and 9.4 million are abroad, said Abu Bakr Al-Gendy, the head of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) announced during a conference in the attendance of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
The conference reviewed social and economic information that led to this census and discussed a process of developing and automating the census of 2017, which is the first to be implemented with electronic methods.
Also attending the meeting were Parliament Speaker Ali Abdul Aal; Prime Minister Sherif Ismail; a number of ministers, governors, and high officials; several countries’ heads of population censuses; and representatives of regional and international organisations concerned with population issues.
During the conference, a report by CAPMAS was presented, in which methods used to come up with the 2017 census was explained. The report also provided statistics about the social and economic characteristics and the population of each governorate. The census of 2017 was conducted through enumerating all citizens and foreigners in the country during 18 April 2017.
The census was further carried out in accordance to a method of theoretical counting, which is through the habitual residence method rather than searching in actual locations as was used in previous censuses. A habitual residence is a place where individuals spend most of their time during the reference period.
CAPMAS said the population of Egypt rose from 59.2 million in 1996 to 72.6 million in 2006 and to 94.8 million in 2017, which implies an average annual growth rate of 2.04% during the period 1996-2006 and to 2.56% during the period 2006-2017.
Regarding the distribution of citizens in governorates, the population of Cairo is the highest, accounting for 10.1% of the total population, followed by Giza (9.1%). The governorates of Daqahleya and Sharqeya also have large populations. Meanwhile, the lowest populations are in border governorates and in Port Said and Suez.
The sex ration in Egypt is 51.6% males and 48.4% females. Of those eligible for marriage (over 18 years), 68% of them are married. The number of married females is 5% higher than the number of married males. Also, 1.7% of females are divorced, versus 0.9% of males.
As for education, slightly less than 19% of the population have a lower-than-average qualification, 22.2% received a vocational degree, 6.9% received a secondary-school degree, and 12.4% have a higher education degree.
The Egyptian society is considered a young one, where 34.2% of the total population is composed of the age group that is below 15 years of age. The percentage of youth (of the age group 15-29 years) is 26.8%. The percentage of the working-age population (15 to 64 years) recorded the highest percentage of the total Egyptian population: 61.9%.
In 2016, CAPMAS said the Egyptian population was 91 million, which moved up by one million since 2015.
