Middle East: U.N. Sees Falling Middle East Fertility Rates

By Neil MacFarquhar
Eight of the 15 countries that experienced the biggest drop in population growth since 1980 are in the Middle East, led by Iran, United Nations population experts say.

Hania Zlotnik, director of the population division at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said the shift suggests that education and access to family planning can play a far greater role than expected in reducing population growth, even in conservative Muslim states.

“In most of the Islamic world it’s amazing, the decline in fertility that has happened,’’ Ms. Zlotnik told reporters at a population conference this week. She noted that Middle Eastern nations with high birth rates, like Yemen, are now the exception. “Even in cultures that are Muslim, advances of a very big quantity can be made, if the government has enough commitment to provide the services and the social infrastructure that validates those changes,” she said.

The countries with the biggest change are those that have pushed to provide information to both wives and husbands, even in rural areas, about the various methods of contraception that are available, she said. Once women are given some right to chose, it is almost inevitable that they have fewer children.

From 1975 to 1980, women in Iran were giving birth to nearly 7 children per family, according to the latest U.N. population report; from 2005 to 2010 that number is expected to be less than 2. Other Middle Eastern states in the top 15, in order of the steepest drop, include Tunisia, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Kuwait, Qatar and Morocco.

The fertility rate in the Palestinian territories is estimated to have gone from 7.39 in 1975 to 1980 to 5.09 in 2005 to 2010. Israel’s growth rate over the same period dropped from 3.41 to 2.81.