Sociological challenges for Egypt’s development: 1981–2013

This paper examines the extent to which women’s education, fertility rate, corruption and urbanization affects long-term economic growth in Egypt. We are particularly interested in the impact of female education and fertility rate on economic growth, but we also examine the relationship between economic growth and corruption. The results suggest that investments in female education can reduce fertility rate with a small but significant immediate effect. As the fertility rate increases real GDP growth decreases with a lag of 2 years. The immediate effect of greater female education on real GDP is negative but overall it has a positive impact when lags are taken into account. Interestingly, the immediate effect of urbanization on real GDP growth was negative and turned to be positive on the long run. Finally, corruption was found to have a negative impact on GDP growth in Egypt over our studied time period.