CAIRO — Five-year-old Farah will live alone without siblings. Her father, Karim Jaber, a legal accountant in his 30s, and his wife have decided to stop having children. “I cannot provide a decent life for more than one child,” he told Al-Manassa.
Jaber’s decision did not come out of nowhere; He had told his wife early in their marriage life that he didn’t want to have children. But his wife convinced him to just have one child so they could avoid being stigmatized as infertile. He agreed to just have one child. And once Farah was born, Jaber rejected his wife’s repeated attempts to have a second child.
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Since Jaber and his wife married seven years ago, their financial situation has changed positively. But his concerns about the impacts of the economic crisis in Egypt have not disappeared. That has made him insist on his position: only one child.
“I got married in a newly rented apartment, and I did not have a car,” he said. “The circumstances have changed, but I still see having children as a difficult responsibility. How can I at least guarantee my children have a good education?”
Jaber says providing a good living standard has become a challenge in light of the successive increases in the prices of goods and services. While he was educated in economically stable conditions — and free of competition and social superiority — he now finds himself forced to save huge sums of money annually just to send his daughter to a school that he is not completely satisfied with, but it is the most he can provide.
“I pay about 50,000 pounds ($1,000) for my daughter’s tuition fees. I can manage them from my wife and my work, but it is impossible for me to provide the same amount for another child.”
Continuous decline
Official figures show that annual inflation in Egypt’s cities rose slightly from 26.4% in September to 26.5% in October, driven by higher fuel prices, while overall annual inflation rate was 26.3% in October 2024 compared to 38.5% for the same month the previous year.
Meanwhile, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMS) said in November that Egypt, which has a population of 107 million, had seen a decline in the number of births over the past five years. CAPMS data shows that the Egypt’s population increased by one million within 268 days, or 8 months and 28 days, while the previous two millions were reached in only 250 days, and 245 days respectively.
Experts attributed this decline to young people’s reluctance to marry and have children amid higher inflation, which has increased the cost of all goods and services. Young people also prefer to migrate for the same reason, they said.
Akram Alfy, a researcher at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said Egypt is on its way to register a newborn every minute within 10 years. According to the health ministry, there is a newborn every 25 seconds now. And three years ago, there was a newborn every 15 seconds.
Inflation primarily affects the decision to marry.
Hala Mansour, Professor of Sociology at Banha University in the Nile Delta, said the birth rate decrease is driven by people’s reluctance to get married due to the skyrocketing costs of marriage, and the higher rate in divorce largely due to economic pressures resulting from higher inflation.
“Inflation does not affect the decision to have children, but it primarily affects the decision to marry,” said Samia Khader, Professor of Sociology at Ain Shams University in Cairo, adding that young men and women emigrate in large numbers to improve their economic conditions, affecting marriage rates and consequently birth rates. Even families who used to refuse their children’s migration are now pushing them to do so in order to improve their living conditions, Khader said.
According to the World Bank, migration rates from Egypt have increased significantly over the past years, with 74% of Egyptian migrants heading to the Gulf States, 18% to Europe and North America, and 8% to the rest of the world.
Serious problem
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has always considered population growth to be the most serious issue facing Egypt, affecting the country’s resources. Officials have also blamed population growth for the economic situation the country has experienced in recent years. The government believes that its tangible efforts to confront population growth through awareness campaigns, which it says helped decrease birth rate over the past five years.
Yet Khader said the government’s efforts in the past decades — adopting family planning and awareness campaigns on radio, television and even films — were more effective than in recent years.
The state has intensified its campaigns aimed at reducing population density, sometimes by warning and sometimes by raising awareness of the dangers of population growth. Among these campaigns is the “Two is enough” campaign launched by the Ministry of Social Solidarity, urging citizens to be satisfied with only two children.
The Ministry of Health also launched another campaign called “Your right to plan” in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund and with support from the European Union, and sought to provide free family planning services, in addition to counseling, family planning and reproductive health through specialists.
Choosing not to have children
The decline in the number of births is accompanied by an increase in the number of pages and groups on social media dedicated to people without children, which raises the question of its impact on the population’s growth slowdown. It is not clear how many people without children are in Egypt. Most of their social media pages are closed to its members.
Dalia Mohsen, 28, a lecturer and novelist who does not have children, says she feels sorry for the children who come into this world. She said those children will suffer when they grow up and see their world is plunged into wars, environmental changes, the control of artificial intelligence, inflation and other dangers that the world is witnessing.
Mohsen is also concerned that if she had children, they would inherit her “diseases and her good and bad genes.” She said suffers from chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
I had to confront my family with the fact that I had decided to prevent pregnancy.
While Jaber was satisfied with one child, Dalia made a firm and final decision: no children at all. In addition to her convictions, other economic factors were added after two and a half years of marriage. “It is definitely difficult and scary,” she said. “I like to control things in my life, and this will not happen if I decide to have children.”
“I don’t want my children to blame me for the decision to have them in a world where I don’t have guarantees to provide money or even influence and authority that will guarantee them a suitable job [in the future].” Fortunately for the young novelist, who hails from a Nile Delta village, her husband also does not want to have children. It is not easy for a woman from a rural community to express such opinions openly in such a conservative society. She has never talked about her ideas to avoid ridicule or harsh criticism.
“I had to confront my family and those around me with the fact that I had decided to prevent pregnancy after repeated prayers and supplications because I had not had children after marriage,” she said.
One or two maximum
Mai Ashraf, 28, doesn’t have children yet, but she is aware that she could change her mind one day. She said her husband will probably not accept her idea no to have children. A physician, Ashraf said inflation is the main factor that made her take such a decision of not having children. She said her main concern right now is to stay in the same social class which has become “a real challenge” without children, “so what about after having children.”
She said the number of people without children in Egypt is very large and increasing, but they don’t announce their convictions and ideas for fear of backlash in conservative society.
In contrast, Sociology Professor Mohamed Shukr downplays the impact of childlessness on reducing the birth rate in Egypt, stressing that increased awareness among young people has been the main drive. Many young people now want to have only one child or two only.
19.2% of people polled supported the idea of not having children at all due to high inflation.
Al-Manassa has conducted a survey that included 26 people who are between 25 and 45 years old and about to get married and newly married. The survey showed that 19.2% of them supported the idea of not having children at all due to high inflation. It also showed that 80.8% of them opposed the idea, stressing that they would be satisfied with one or two children at most to be able to provide a decent life for them.
While the novelist Mohsen has decided that not having children is the safest solution to confront the economic and societal challenges and the burdens that the future may bring, Jaber aims to provide the ideal environment for his one child. He hopes to give her a good education that will give her the opportunity to leave Egypt.
