![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonald(I saved this one for my trip. Gotta love cut and paste.)
Once upon a time, it was believed that at the end of the demographic transition fertility rates would stabilize at the levels needed for long-term replacement, namely two and a fraction children born per woman. (Two children to replace the parents, the fraction to replace the child who dies before becoming a parent.) Plunging fertility rates worldwide seem to have decisively disproven this assumption. 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? As this newsletter suggests, we could well see below-replacement fertility rates in all but a few countries. In Morocco, for instance,
The Syrian case is particularly instructive:
And, as the case of the Maghreb illustrates, the trends that act to encourage lower fertility aren't going to stop acting:
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, of course, these countries can count on a mini boomlet as their populations age.)
(Insert "India" or "Southeast Asia" for "Middle East," if you wish. Apart from famous low-fertility Singapore, Thailand already has achieved below-replacement fertility rates, as have the South Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Goa. 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 like the Uighurs and the Tibetans which continue to show strongly positive growth.)
In fact, it might well be that at the end of the 21st century, it will be the developed countries which will have the stable (or even growing!) populations while the developing countries will have the stagnant and declining populations. If fertility rates in (say) Libya are just as low as they are in Italy, and if Italy remains much richer than Libya, why wouldn't Libyans leave en masse for Naples and Milan? Extend this on a global scale, if you would, and you might understand the nature of the next population crisis after this one.
Once upon a time, it was believed that at the end of the demographic transition fertility rates would stabilize at the levels needed for long-term replacement, namely two and a fraction children born per woman. (Two children to replace the parents, the fraction to replace the child who dies before becoming a parent.) Plunging fertility rates worldwide seem to have decisively disproven this assumption. 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? As this newsletter suggests, we could well see below-replacement fertility rates in all but a few countries. In Morocco, for instance,
[t]he onset of fertility transition in 1975 marked a political and economic turning point. The State lost one of its key sources of non-tax revenues: phosphate. Half the value was wiped off prices in a few months, at a time when the war in the Sahara was making huge demands on spending. The fertility rate plunged in four years from 7.4 in 1973 to 5.9 in 1977. The State had to turn to the individual: taxes and the tax load rose more than 50 percent between 1972 and 1975, with the burden of phosphate-funded State spending shifting to household resources. Morocco encouraged female participation in the economy, and a new pace of life affected marriage and reproduction decisions. The opportunity cost of a birth became a factor in family strategies even amongst illiterate groups.
The Syrian case is particularly instructive:
Syrian fertility had attained world record levels sometimes in excess of 8 children, and crude birth rates above 50 per thousand. Age at first marriage has been rising since 1986, from 20 years in the 1970s and 1980s to 24 at the start of the present decade, when 4 in 10 women were practicing birth control. Now, despite the silence of the State, which had followed a pro-natalist policy largely for political considerations and the Middle East conflicts, Syrians have been limiting their fertility in a process which, since 1986, has affected rural as much as urban society, illiterate and educated groups alike, outward-looking regions like Damascus and Lattakiah as well as bastions of traditionalism like Aleppo. This has been a spontaneous reaction by the populace to the rigors of the recession. Between the beginning and end of the 1980s, women's participation rate doubled as dwindling resources and an increasing tax burden forced them out of the home.
And, as the case of the Maghreb illustrates, the trends that act to encourage lower fertility aren't going to stop acting:
If membership of the Maghreb is a factor of delayed nuptiality and reduced fertility, that may be because the Western imprint is stronger there than in the Middle East. Foreign newspapers are on sale in the Maghreb earlier than elsewhere in the Middle East. European television channels are often more popular than the national stations. But this blanket exposure to the media and its demographic messages would affect only an affluent urban minority, and the explanation does not really hold water for the predominantly rural majority of the population among whom fertility is declining more sharply than in the Mashreq.
Is education the key to this more controlled fertility? Education, both private and public, in the Maghreb has made certain accommodations on the use of language. Despite the Arabization policies pursued by Maghrebin governments, the use of French is spreading. Handbooks in French can convey a different outlook to those written in Arabic, despite the presumed identical content. However, if this explanation held entirely true, similar processes would also be observed in countries where a foreign language is equally influential, like western Africa. But despite high enrollment ratios - in French education - West African fertility shows little decline. Education in a foreign language as a vehicle for modernization is therefore not the unique determinant of atypical fertility decline in the Maghreb.
The Maghreb situation can be attributed to the media and foreign language education, but even more so to its diaspora in Europe. It has become, willingly or unwillingly, the vector of two cultures. Demographic patterns in particular are imbued with exogenously acquired values. In the 1960s, the migrant family model was intrinsically pro-natalist. A generation on, a society shaped by immigration has moved away from its founding values. But the difference between the two shores of the Mediterranean does not imply total dislocation: proximity, low travel and communication costs, the impulsion to return to family and friends - all stimulated exchange networks. Europe as the favored destination for Maghrebin emigrants is a crucial factor in engendering an inflow of malthusian norms.
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, of course, these countries can count on a mini boomlet as their populations age.)
(Insert "India" or "Southeast Asia" for "Middle East," if you wish. Apart from famous low-fertility Singapore, Thailand already has achieved below-replacement fertility rates, as have the South Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Goa. 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 like the Uighurs and the Tibetans which continue to show strongly positive growth.)
In fact, it might well be that at the end of the 21st century, it will be the developed countries which will have the stable (or even growing!) populations while the developing countries will have the stagnant and declining populations. If fertility rates in (say) Libya are just as low as they are in Italy, and if Italy remains much richer than Libya, why wouldn't Libyans leave en masse for Naples and Milan? Extend this on a global scale, if you would, and you might understand the nature of the next population crisis after this one.
