Population

The population of Egypt stands at around 58,519,000, with projections placing the population at 65 million by the end of 1997. Although the birth rate has gone down slightly (from 2.8% annually in the 1980s down to 2.3%), the country's population explosion is its greatest and most intractable problem, exacerbated by the sheer lack of habitable land area. Almost the entire population lives in the Delta and in the Nile Valley, which is only about 4% of the country's land area, making this land among of the most densely populated in the world.