Volume 15 - Article 18 | Pages 499–516  

Fertility change in Egypt: From second to third birth

By Daniele Vignoli

Abstract

This work focuses on Egypt, a country that notwithstanding its advanced stage of socio-demographic transition has shown near stagnation in the reduction of fertility levels in the last decade. The progression from second to third birth is a crucial component in fertility change, since the reduction especially of third and higher-order births maintains the fertility decline. For this reason, the study aims at analyzing the main determinants of the third-birth intensities of Egyptian two-child mothers, applying an event-history analysis to the 2000 Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey.
The study’s results show that fertility differentials among the country’s social groups continue to persist. Moreover, the difficult change in the fertility of women with high educational standards seems to be responsible for the stalling fertility decline during recent years.
The analysis, however, has demonstrated that within the framework of the ongoing process of modernization in the country, even the most laggard groups of women showed a decrease in third-birth intensity during the 1990s. The study also reveals that the preference for at least one son in the family on the progression to the third child is weakening among women who have completed secondary education.

Author's Affiliation

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

‘Silver splits’ in Europe: The role of grandchildren and other correlates
Volume 46 - Article 21

Union formation under conditions of uncertainty: The objective and subjective sides of employment uncertainty
Volume 45 - Article 5

Time preferences and fertility: Evidence from Italy
Volume 44 - Article 50

Happy parents’ tweets: An exploration of Italian Twitter data using sentiment analysis
Volume 40 - Article 25

Persistent joblessness and fertility intentions
Volume 40 - Article 8

The positive impact of women’s employment on divorce: Context, selection, or anticipation?
Volume 38 - Article 37

Uncertain lives: Insights into the role of job precariousness in union formation in Italy
Volume 35 - Article 10

Religion and union formation in Italy: Catholic precepts, social pressure, and tradition
Volume 31 - Article 35

Towards a new understanding of cohabitation: Insights from focus group research across Europe and Australia
Volume 31 - Article 34

Whose job instability affects the likelihood of becoming a parent in Italy? A tale of two partners
Volume 26 - Article 2

Things change: Women’s and men’s marital disruption dynamics in Italy during a time of social transformations, 1970-2003
Volume 24 - Article 5

Rising marital disruption in Italy and its correlates
Volume 20 - Article 4

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Unemployment and fertility: The relationship between individual and aggregated unemployment and fertility during 1994–2014 in Norway
Volume 46 - Article 35    | Keywords: aggregated unemployment, event history analysis, fertility, individual unemployment, Norway, register data

Coping with ageing: An historical longitudinal study of internal return migrations later in life in the Netherlands
Volume 46 - Article 27    | Keywords: aging, event history analysis, life course, migrations, sequence analysis, trajectories

Birth and employment transitions of women in Turkey: The emergence of role incompatibility
Volume 39 - Article 46    | Keywords: employment, event history analysis, fertility, Turkey, women

Mixed marriages between immigrants and natives in Spain: The gendered effect of marriage market constraints
Volume 39 - Article 1    | Keywords: event history analysis, immigrants, marriage, marriage market, natives, Spain

The formation of ethnically mixed partnerships in Estonia: A stalling trend from a two-sided perspective
Volume 38 - Article 38    | Keywords: Estonia, event history analysis, Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), immigrants, integration, partnership formation, second generation

Cited References: 39

Download to Citation Manager

PubMed

Google Scholar

Volume
Page
Volume
Article ID