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Population in the Arab World declines: UN
| And outside the Arab world, Iran announced a new plan to pay for new babies to boost their population. |
[Al Arabiya Latest] New changes in the Arab World are to influence its population into decline, as more girls join schools, work, marry later and desire to produce fewer babies.
"Impressive declines in fertility have been recorded in the Arab region as a result of increased school enrolment among girls, stronger participation of women in the labor force, and the new trends towards "wait hood" or delayed marriage and the formation of smaller families," said The U.N. Economic and Social Commission on Western Asia (ESCWA) in a report.
"According to the 2008 revision, the unweighted average total fertility rate for the Arab countries declined from 6.2 live births per woman in the period 1980-1985 to 3.3 in the period 2005-2010 compared to 2.6 at the world level, consequently reshaping the age structure of the population of the Arab region," the ESCWA report added.
However, rates largely vary in individual countries; Egypt is projected to remain by far the most populous Arab country,
| Despite a total fertility rate of 3.01, they are starting from the largest base population, so the Egyptian population will remain high for a while. |
reaching a total population of 91.8 million in 2015 and 98.6 million in 2020. Conversely, Comoros, Bahrain, Djibouti and Qatar will remain the countries with the smallest population size, with each accounting for less than 0.5 per cent of that of the Arab region.
| With such small starting populations, even if they had a fertility rate of 20, their populations would not quickly reach large numbers. *sigh* But journalists are not expected to understand even simple arithmetic any more. |
Also, during 2005-2010, each of Lebanon, Tunisia and the UAE have fertility levels already below replacement level, whereas other countries are set to converge below 2.1 live births per woman by mid century, with the exception of Somalia, Palestine and Mauritania, the report said.
| The CIA Factbook website has a nice country by country comparison chart of fertility rates here. Interestingly, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have significantly different fertility rates, according to the CIA -- one wonders how much those numbers diverge from both what they told the UN and from reality. |
Posted by: Fred 2010-07-28 |
