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rfmcdonaldA thought:
When considering the fact that, after all, there is no reason for fertility rates to settle around replacement levels, given that the decision to bear children is individual while the question of maintaining a styable national population is a very collective decision that no one person can make adequately, it occurred to me: Is there any reason for fertility rates in the Middle East to stabilize at replacement levels?
Certainly growing poverty makes raising large numbers of children difficult, while rising levels of education and urbanization have been shown to encourage low fertility rates. Too, patriarchal societies are always challenged by the advent of inexpensive forms of birth control, when the women decide that they are no longer interested in having children. Already, in the vast majority of the Middle East (Saudi Arabia accepted) fertility rates are no higher than they were in the United States during the baby boom of the 1950's and 1960's, and they are continuing to drop sharply. (In Turkey, Lebanon, Tunisia and Iran, for example, they are barely at replacement levels.) If relatively conservative mores, coupled with a strong familial orientation, are responsible for the radically below-replacement fertility rates in Mediterranean Europe, what on Earth will things be like in the Middle East in a generation's time?
It doesn't seem that unlikely that the Middle East might complete the transition to below-replacement fertility rates fairly soon. Enough demographic momentum has been built up to ensure that even with fertility rates substantially below replacement, there would still be net natural increase. Still, by 2100, the Middle East's major problem might be a rapidly aging and declining population--if anything, a population that might be more sharply declining that the southern and eastern European, since those countries can at least count on being net immigrant-receiving countries, and those countries are likely liberal enough to see the shift towards pro-feminist and pro-natalist views that have helped keep birth rates in France and Norden relatively high. It looks like Islamism might not be the best ideology for long-term population growth after all.
(Insert "India" or "Southeast Asia" for "Middle East," if you wish. For that matter, insert "China"--fertility rates in Shanghai and Hong Kong are already some of the lowest in the world, and it's only the ethnic minorities which continue to show strongly positive growth.)
When considering the fact that, after all, there is no reason for fertility rates to settle around replacement levels, given that the decision to bear children is individual while the question of maintaining a styable national population is a very collective decision that no one person can make adequately, it occurred to me: Is there any reason for fertility rates in the Middle East to stabilize at replacement levels?
Certainly growing poverty makes raising large numbers of children difficult, while rising levels of education and urbanization have been shown to encourage low fertility rates. Too, patriarchal societies are always challenged by the advent of inexpensive forms of birth control, when the women decide that they are no longer interested in having children. Already, in the vast majority of the Middle East (Saudi Arabia accepted) fertility rates are no higher than they were in the United States during the baby boom of the 1950's and 1960's, and they are continuing to drop sharply. (In Turkey, Lebanon, Tunisia and Iran, for example, they are barely at replacement levels.) If relatively conservative mores, coupled with a strong familial orientation, are responsible for the radically below-replacement fertility rates in Mediterranean Europe, what on Earth will things be like in the Middle East in a generation's time?
It doesn't seem that unlikely that the Middle East might complete the transition to below-replacement fertility rates fairly soon. Enough demographic momentum has been built up to ensure that even with fertility rates substantially below replacement, there would still be net natural increase. Still, by 2100, the Middle East's major problem might be a rapidly aging and declining population--if anything, a population that might be more sharply declining that the southern and eastern European, since those countries can at least count on being net immigrant-receiving countries, and those countries are likely liberal enough to see the shift towards pro-feminist and pro-natalist views that have helped keep birth rates in France and Norden relatively high. It looks like Islamism might not be the best ideology for long-term population growth after all.
(Insert "India" or "Southeast Asia" for "Middle East," if you wish. For that matter, insert "China"--fertility rates in Shanghai and Hong Kong are already some of the lowest in the world, and it's only the ethnic minorities which continue to show strongly positive growth.)
