Abstract
There remains a widely perceived notion that “Muslim” societies are especially resistant to embarking upon the path of demographic and familial change that has transformed population profiles in Europe, North America, and other “more developed” areas. In reality, however, fertility levels are falling dramatically for countries and sub-national populations throughout the Ummah – and traditional marriage patterns and living arrangements are undergoing tremendous change. This brief chapter will highlight some of these changes, examine some of their correlates and possible determinants, and speculate about some of their implications.
Dr. Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in the Political Economy Institute (AEI), where Mr. Shah also serves as Research Fellow. They would like to offer thanks to Ms. Kelly Matush of AEI for her assistance in the research for this paper, and also to Ms. Heesu Kim, Mr. Mark Seraydarian, and Ms. Daksha Shakya. The usual caveats obtain.
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Notes
- 1.
Peter R. Blood, ed. Afghanistan: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 2001; available electronically at http://countrystudies.us/afghanistan/36.htm. Though this source dates from 2001, Afghanistan has not as yet been able to undertake a comprehensive and reliable national population count.
- 2.
World Christian Database, Available electronically at http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/.
- 3.
Mapping The Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Muslim Population, October 2009, Washington, DC: Pew Center on Religion and Public Life, 2009, available electronically at http://pewforum.org/Mapping-the-Global-Muslim-Population.aspx.
- 4.
United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, available electronically at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm.
- 5.
United States Bureau of the Census, International Data Base, available electronically at http://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/informationGateway.php.
- 6.
The UNPD does not offer estimates for Kosovo – and while the USCB does calculate current demographic trends for that country, its estimates do not extend back to the 1970s. Note that the UNPD calculates period TFRs rather than cohort TFRs – that is to say “snap-shot” or synthetic estimates of fertility as if a woman completed her childbearing on the schedules for women of all childbearing ages at that time, rather than actual completed childbearing patterns for women from given birth years or cohorts. While there can be important differences between period and cohort estimates of TFR, this matter will not detain us here.
- 7.
Cf. Ron J. Lesthaeghe and Lisa Neidert, “The Second Demographic Transition in the United States: Exception or Textbook Example?” Population and Development Review vol. 32, no. 3 (September 2006): 669–98; Nicholas Eberstadt, Born in the USA: America’s Demographic Exceptionalism”, The American Interest (May/June 2007), available electronically at http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=272.
- 8.
Sutay Yavuz, “Fertility Transition and The Progression to a Third Birth in Turkey,” (Presentation, Institute of Population Studies, Hacettepe University). 2005; available at http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2005-028.pdf, accessed November 23, 2011.
- 9.
Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, “Iran’s Family Planning Program: Responding to a Nation’s Needs,” MENA Policy Brief, Population Reference Bureau, June 2002. Available at http://www.prb.org/Publications/PolicyBriefs/IransFamilyPlanningProgram.aspx, accessed November 23, 2011.
- 10.
Eurostat, “Fertility Indicators” available electronically at http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=demo_find&lang=en; accessed November 18, 2011.
- 11.
Utah’s 1977 TFR derived from Barry Nangle, Ph.D., Utah’s Vital Statistics Births and Deaths 1997, Utah Department of Public Health, Office of Public Health Data, Technical Report no. 202, November 20, 1998; available electronically at http://health.utah.gov/vitalrecords/pub_vs/ia97/ibx97alc.pdf; Muslim-majority country TFR estimates from “World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision”, loc. Cit.
- 12.
Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012, Table 83, http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0083.pdf.
- 13.
Lant H. Pritchett, “Desired Fertility and the Impact of Population Policies”, Population and Development Review, vol. 20, no. 1 (March 1994), pp. 1–55.
- 14.
Cf. United Nations Development Program and Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Arab Human Development Report 2002. New York: UNDP 2002. http://www.arab-hdr.org/publications/other/ahdr/ahdr2002e.pdf, and subsequent editions in this series.
- 15.
The other countries would be Algeria, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Morocco, Qatar, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
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Eberstadt, N., Shah, A. (2012). Fertility Decline in the Muslim World, c. 1975–c. 2005: A Veritable Sea-Change, Still Curiously Unnoticed. In: Groth, H., Sousa-Poza, A. (eds) Population Dynamics in Muslim Countries. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27881-5_2
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