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Egypt The People
The population of Egypt is 81,713,517 (2008 estimate). The people live almost exclusively in the Nile Valley, the Nile Delta, the Suez Canal region, and the northern coastal region of the Sinai Peninsula. There are small communities in the oases of the Libyan Desert and in the oil-drilling and mining towns of the Arabian Desert. There is also a small population of nomadic Bedouins. Egypt’s overall population density is 82 persons per sq km (213 per sq mi), but the population density in the inhabited portions of the country, which make up less than 5 percent of its land area, is 1,900 persons per sq km (4,900 per sq mi).
The population growth rate, which was about 2.5 percent per year in the 1980s, declined steadily in the 1990s as the country’s birth rate fell. In 2008 the rate of population growth was 1.68 percent. The birth rate was 22 per 1,000 persons, and the death rate was 5 per 1,000 persons.
For most of Egypt’s history, the majority of the population was rural and agricultural. In the second half of the 20th century, limited availability of agricultural land prompted peasants to migrate to the cities in search of work. By 2005, 42 percent of the population lived in urban areas.
Ethnic Groups
The ancestors of the Egyptians include many races and ethnic groups, but the present-day population is relatively uniform in terms of language and religion. Most Egyptians are descendants of the ancient Egyptians, a people who originated in northeastern Africa. Some 4,000 Arab horsemen invaded Egypt in 641 ad and eventually conquered it for Islam. From that time, there was significant Arab migration and intermarriage between Arabs and the indigenous population. Traits of other invading peoples, especially the Greeks, Romans, and Ottomans, are also found in present-day Egyptians. The Mamluks, rulers of Egypt between the 13th and 16th centuries, were of Turkic and Circassian origins. They also intermarried with the indigenous population, especially with its elite ranks.
A separate indigenous group, the Nubians, historically lived in northern Sudan and southern Egypt. Hundreds of their ancestral villages were flooded by the formation of Lake Nasser behind the Aswān High Dam. Today the Nubian population is concentrated in Aswān and Cairo. The government does not recognize the Nubians as an ethnic minority.
Also living in Egypt are small numbers of Greeks, Armenians, Italians, Syrian Christians, and Jews. Their numbers declined sharply as a result of emigration after the Suez Crisis of 1956, when rising Egyptian nationalism made them feel unwelcome. Many of those who remained in the country intermarried with indigenous Muslims or Christians.
Language
Nearly the entire population of Egypt speaks Arabic. However, only well-educated people easily understand standard Arabic. Colloquial Egyptian Arabic is the language of daily conversation. Many Nubians also speak their ancestral language. Berber is spoken in a few settlements in the oases of the Western Desert. Coptic Christians use the Coptic language, descended from ancient Egyptian, for liturgical purposes, but it is not a language in daily use. English and French are common second languages among educated Egyptians.
Education
Historically, religious authorities provided basic education in local mosque schools. Higher Islamic studies became available at Al-Azhar mosque (founded in 970) in Cairo. In 988 Al-Azhar University was established. This is the oldest university in the world and the leading institution of Islamic higher education in the world today. Al-Azhar University operates a network of religious schools parallel to the state system.
In the first half of the 19th century Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali established state-run professional, technical, and foreign-language schools for boys. A network of state-run schools for boys was established in 1867. The first state school for girls opened in 1873. Since 1923, primary and intermediate education has been free, and it is now compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 13. Public secondary and university education is also free but is not compulsory.
Cairo University, established in 1908, is Egypt’s leading institution of higher education. There are 12 other state-run public universities, including Ayn Shams University (founded in 1950), located in Cairo; the University of Alexandria (1942); and the University of Asyūt (1957). Al-Azhar University, renowned as an institution of higher religious studies, also offers programs in engineering, medicine, business administration, and agriculture; women have been admitted since 1962. The American University in Cairo (1919) is the only private and fee-charging institution of higher education. The Institutes of Dramatic Arts, Cinema, and Ballet, run by the ministry of culture, offer higher education in the fine arts.
Rapid population growth has severely overburdened Egypt’s educational system. Classrooms from the primary-school level to the university level are overcrowded, and schools lack many resources—such as up-to-date science laboratories, audio-visual aids, and even sufficient numbers of desks and textbooks—necessary for an adequate education. Although primary-school enrollment is officially 100 percent, many children attend school irregularly or not at all because they must work to help support themselves and their families. In 2005, 59.3 percent of the adult population was literate: 69.4 percent of males and 48.9 percent of females.
Social Structure
For most of Egypt’s history its society was agrarian. Large landowners growing primarily cotton and sugar constituted Egypt’s dominant social class from the 1830s until 1952, when the government enacted a land reform. Before the land reform, about 2,000 large landowners, including the king, owned about 20 percent of all agricultural land, while more than 2 million lesser owners owned about 13 percent. Millions of peasants owned no land at all. The land reform limited the amount of agricultural land that individuals and families could own; limits were lowered further in 1961 and 1969. These measures broke the social and political power of the large landowning class.
About 260,000 hectares (about 650,000 acres) of agricultural land were redistributed as a result of the land reform. However, not enough land was redistributed to allow all peasant families that wished to do so to support themselves by farming. Consequently, large numbers of peasants migrated from rural villages to Cairo and other cities. Many found jobs in the cities, particularly in industries and services, which were growing rapidly as a result of the government’s major industrialization programs of the 1950s and 1960s. During this period the government nationalized and expanded existing banking, textile, and other industries and established many new, large-scale, modern industries. These developments expanded the ranks of the urban wageworkers. However, many former peasants remained underemployed or marginally employed in jobs that were not steady or did not pay cash wages.
Beginning in 1973, large numbers of peasants, as well as urban workers and professionals, migrated to Saudi Arabia, Libya, and other oil-exporting countries to work for wages as much as six times higher than they could earn in Egypt. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), many peasants migrated to Iraq and took farm jobs, replacing Iraqis who had left to fight in the war.
Both trends—migration from the countryside to the cities and working abroad—continued in the 1990s. By the early 2000s only about 35 percent of the labor force was engaged in the traditional occupations of farming, herding, and fishing. An estimated 2.5 million Egyptians worked abroad at any given time.
Ways of Life
Two major socioeconomic groupings exist in Egypt. One grouping consists of a wealthy elite and a Western-educated upper middle class. The other grouping, which includes the vast majority of all Egyptians, is made up of peasants and the urban lower middle class and working class. There are great differences in clothing, diet, and consumer habits between the two groupings.
In the 1970s the government introduced economic liberalization policies known as the open door (infitah in Arabic). These policies greatly expanded the numbers of middle-class professionals (importers, financiers, commercial agents, and various kinds of middlemen) with connections to foreign capital and foreign culture. These professionals are major consumers of imported luxury cars, European fashions, and European and American films and music. The lifestyle of the old, wealthy elite is similar.
The wealth, lifestyle, and foreign cultural orientation of the old elite and the newly rich contrast sharply with the poverty of the vast majority of the population. Most Egyptians cannot afford, and in some cases do not want, much of what they see advertised on television, in the newspapers, and on urban billboards, or glorified in Western television serials.
Both major groupings enjoy a few of the same aspects of popular culture. These include soccer, the popular music of legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum, and the comic films of actor ‘Adil Imam.
In the past, women from peasant and poor urban families worked in the fields or in the shops of their families, while women from the elite and the middle class remained at home as a symbol that the male head of the household was wealthy enough to support the family without its women working outside the home. Today maintaining a middle-class lifestyle usually requires married women to work for wages. Many wear headscarves as a way of asserting that they remain good Muslim women despite working outside the home.
The most popular items of Egyptian cuisine are flatbread, boiled or deep-fried fava beans, kushari (a dish combining pasta, lentils, and onions), and fresh fruits and vegetables. Tea and coffee are the most popular beverages and are essential components of social and business visits. Wealthier Egyptians frequently eat European food, especially French cuisine.
Social Issues
Egypt’s most serious social issues are poverty and overpopulation. There are few wealthy people and many poor people. When adjusted for inflation, the incomes of peasants and working people rose only modestly between the mid-1970s and the end of the 20th century. Overpopulation has strained the physical infrastructure—including roads, sewer systems, water supply, and utility lines—and social service networks of Cairo and other cities. Middle-class housing is expensive and difficult to find. Violent crimes, relatively rare until the late 20th century, have increased as urban life has become more difficult.
Social Services
Employees of the government and of state-owned enterprises receive substantial social benefits, including health care, a pension, and unemployment insurance. Large private firms also may provide such benefits. Smaller privately owned firms are not required to do so, and most do not. Egypt has no system of income support for the poor. Under the open door policy, which aimed at encouraging private enterprise and loosening state controls on the economy, government subsidies that lowered the prices of basic consumer goods were radically cut. As a result, the prices of these goods rose considerably. However, bread sold in poorer neighborhoods is still subsidized. |
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