STATISTICAL NOTES ON THE INFLUENCE 
OF EDUCATION IN EGYPT. 
By M. HOSNY, M.A., B.Sc. 
The statistical returns for Egypt are — as compared with European data — still 
in a somewhat elementary stage. Age-distributions are of very little value, and 
in the case of infantile mortality we have only information for certain towns. 
Further, in the larger towns there is a considerable cosmopolitan element, which 
gives them a widely different character from the often sparsely populated rural and 
desert districts. Education is not compulsory, and schools and literacy are largely 
confined to Cairo, Alexandria and the Canal Government, even when we exclude 
all foreign scholars. In the same way criminality* preponderates, in an inverse 
order it is true, in these three districts, but it is not absolutely certain whether this 
is due to their more efficient policing, to the presence of more foreigners, or to a 
real absence of crime in the rural populations. Crime does not appear to arise in 
Egypt from poverty or drunkenness, two of the main factors of its origin in 
Western Europe. The criminal, indeed, is rarely habitual ; he is an amateur, 
rather than a professional, and criminals are more often well-to-do, their crimes 
arising from motives of revenge or passion. 
The fact that criminality in Egypt is highly correlated with literacy and 
scholarship would be noteworthy and might possibly be used as an argument 
against education, did not the association of crime and education arise from the 
prevalency of both in the more populated districts, where again we find the 
greatest abundance of foreigners. Naturally such questions arise as: 
(i) Are the foreigners — and if so, which section of them — to any extent 
responsible for the prevalence of crime in the districts frequented by them ? 
(ii) If we allow for urban conditions, will there still be found a high asso- 
ciation of crime and education ? 
It is perfectly easy to obtain from the Egyptian Census- ' we used that of 
1907 — the number of foreigners of each denomination in the various Egyptian 
* We understand by " criminality " in this paper, not commission of but conviction for crime. 
