In late nineteenth-century Egypt, census data was being used to scientifically represent the reality of an alarming population increase and its impact on future food distribution. Use of numerical and statistical analyses brought to life the relationship between overpopulation and the narrow strip of agricultural land along the Nile that constitutes the fertile yet restricted cultivable land in Egypt (Owen 1996).

Similar correlations have been used in the past 50 years to curtail population growth in most of the developing world, including the Arab world …