[ArkanExplorer]

Egypt's problem is population growth:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/egypt/2026/

And in particular their fertility rate, which remains stubbornly high at 3.33 children per woman.

A popular meme has been that as countries and people get richer, they have fewer children. But, that is not occurring in Egypt, which is about twice as rich as India or Bangladesh, but has about 50% more children.

Really, its just Egyptian and Muslim culture which prioritises volume of children ahead of all else. Egypt will suffer if they cannot bring their population to sustainable levels.

The President of Egypt agrees:

https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/98679/Egypt-s-populatio...

Keep in mind that Egypt has a scientific output equivalent to Luxembourg: https://www.natureindex.com/country-outputs/generate/All/glo...

Despite having a population 166x larger. So, Earth is not gaining much by having millions of Egyptians - just increased resource degradation.

[dang]

We've banned this account. You can't post slurs like this to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[vidarh]

Egypt's fertility rate has as far as I can tell dropped every year but a handful since the late 1950's:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

To suggest this implies some cultural resistance to reducing fertility seems to be fundamentally flawed.

It also doesn't really work like that - even countries with a culture that involves favouring large families see fertility rates drop as they develop.

This is not a "meme", but a simple observation from data that show that it has happened consistently to every developing country - including Egypt. What you can not do is assume it will happen at the same rate everywhere.

[inglor_cz]

"every year but a handful"

True, but the effect of TFR on total population depends on the base too.

A growth from 3.0 to 3.5 between 2005 and 2015 means quite a lot of extra children born, because Egypt of 2005 had already 75 million people.

[jiggawatts]

This shouldn't be voted down into oblivion.

Some truths are uncomfortable to hear, but that doesn't make them less true.

When I was in Egypt, everywhere I looked I saw signs of overpopulation and an idle, largely uneducated workforce standing around half the day in bread lines kilometres long.

[dang]

Not only should it have been downvoted, we've banned the account. Religious and nationalistic flamewar is not allowed here, and outright slurs are utterly not ok.

If you have something thoughtful and substantive to say about conditions in Egyptian society, or any other society, that's different.

[vidarh]

It starts with a claim that is fundamentally false, though: the suggestion that Egypt's fertility rate is not dropping.

I hesitate to call it a lie, because it could simply be that they have not looked up the numbers. But it is questionable when they took time to look up a population pyramid but neglected to look up the actual fertility rate over time which would have immediately invalidated the central pillar of a comment that then went on to assign blame for a falsehood.

[smnrchrds]

It's getting downvoted because it's blatantly racist. How else do you interpret this but racism:

> Earth is not gaining much by having millions of Egyptians - just increased resource degradation

EDIT: It also says the reason for Egypt's higher fertility rate is Islam, while comparing it to Bangladesh, another Muslim country. So it's not like the comment is racist but insightful if you ignore racism. It's racist and nonsensical.