Over a quarter, 25.8 percent, of Egyptian males aged from 15 to 29 years old want to live abroad, according to a 2014 official survey, the results of which were issued on Tuesday, state news agency MENA reported.

Only 7.8 percent of females in comparison have shown the desire to leave Egypt, according to the survey, which wasconducted by the Egyptian Center for Population in cooperation with Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

The numbers amount to a total percentage of 17.2 percent of young Egyptians in the same age group (15-29 years old) wanting to live abroad.

The survey showed that 93 percent of them want to go for a temporary period of about five years.

The percentage of youth who want to leave the country decreased from 18.3 percent in a 2009 survey.

Saudi Arabia ranked highest among the countries Egyptian youth want to travel to, as 38.7 percent said they would live there, from a total of 48.8 percent who said they wanted to live in another Arab country.

As for living in western countries, 12.5 percent of the youth expressed they would rather move there.

The youth expressed reasons why they are eager to leave Egypt.

A percentage of 65.6 percent of young people between 18 and 29 years old said it was because there are no job opportunities.

Around 48.9 percent of the youth said hard living conditions made them want to leave and about 44 percent referred to low wages as a reason to migrate.

Only 10.1 percent said they wanted to leave for security reasons.

The survey also looked at education factors.

The university undergraduates and graduates who want to travel amount to double the number of the uneducated, 30.3 percent and 17.2 percent respectively.

Youth from rural and urban areas similar expressed views of wanting to leave: 28.3 percent for rural areas and 23.3 percent for urban areas. For slum areas, it was 16.2 percent.

The survey of youth was sponsored by Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab.

The conference where the survey results came out was attended by Minister of Planning Ashraf El-Araby, Minister for Population Hala Youssef, Youth Minister Khaled Abdel-Aziz and CAPMAS chief Abo Bakr El-Guindy.

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