Marriage, contraception, and fertility decline in Egypt: sociological insights from Bongaarts’s proximate determinants framework

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Background Egypt’s total fertility rate (TFR) increased from 3.0 births per woman in 2008 to 3.5 in 2014, before declining to 2.85 in 2021. This study examined the proximate determinants associated with the post-2014 fertility decline. Methods The analysis used published aggregate indicators from the nationally representative EDHS 2014 and EFHS 2021, covering 21,762 and 20,481 ever-married women aged 15–49 years, respectively. Bongaarts’s proximate determinants framework was applied to marriage, contraception, postpartum infecundability, and induced abortion. Relative contributions were assessed using logarithmic decomposition, and sensitivity analysis evaluated total fecundity (TF) values of 15.3 and 17. Results The marriage index declined from 0.56 to 0.39, contraceptive prevalence increased from 58 to 66%, and the contraceptive index declined from 0.41 to 0.34. Weighted contraceptive effectiveness decreased slightly from 0.935 to 0.921, while the postpartum infecundability index declined from 0.79 to 0.77. Marriage accounted for 63.7% of the model-implied fertility change, contraception 32.2%, and postpartum infecundability 4.1%. However, the model-estimated TFR declined from 2.82 to 1.58, indicating that the measured determinants did not fully reproduce the observed fertility trajectory. Conclusion Egypt’s post-2014 fertility decline was associated mainly with reduced marriage exposure and stronger contraceptive inhibition, while postpartum infecundability played a limited role.

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