It's not really a mystery why TFRs have dropped in Muslim countries - there is no ideological/religious reason for objecting to contraception, unlike Catholic countries. Mullahs have been very progressive in some countries, not least Iran, in encouraging lower birth rates. The problem is, TFRs haven't come down fast enough in places like Egypt where there are no longer adequate resources to sustain the population. A TFR of 4 is actually huge - doesn't matter what it started out as. Anything over 2.1 (replacement) is in fact unsustainable. So while we must applaud the drops in TFR, don't clap too loud until TFRs get down to 2.1 or lower. Indeed, some analysts are saying that we must reduce population, so perhaps we should hold off the applause until we get to 1.6.

Spot on Steven. The population issue is not unimportant - and especially in Africa - but as a variable, it is losing its appeal as population growth is falling. Actually, it was never really up there as an issue but it has 'nutter appeal'. That's what I enjoy.

One possible reason for the drop in TFR is Muslim males working or fighting in areas away from their wives. Another possible reason is urbanisation. The trend for urban people to have fewer children than rural people is I think applies to all poulations. However, those factors would still probably not explain all the great drop.

"And sociologists' theories about population, or anything else, aren't worth the pixels"...or in general, the predictions of economists, financial experts, vested interests...etc.

There is, however, a counter argument--"Yes, of course, the trend didn't follow the forecast because governments and organisations took remedial action". Y2K for example.

No one has spotted the real reason, thus far. It's the Americans.

They've been slaughtering Muslims ever since their epic slaughtering of the Vietnamese hence keeping population growth down.

Perhaps they deserve a Nobel Prize!

P.S. Sorry, I forgot, Obomber already has one.

*Actually, it was never really up there as an issue*

Maybe for a Cheryl, who lives in blissfully unaware and spacious
Adelaide, and not on a Manilla rubbish tip, trying to feed 8 children off other peoples scraps. Ignorance is bliss it seems,
certainly for Cheryl.

Dear Steven,

Really mate?

Okay I'm going to bite my tongue and let you explain to me why this is about Muslim countries and why we should note “that the first 12 countries in the table are all Muslim countries.”?

Why are they ordered in this fashion?

For the other readers here is an excellent TED talk on religion and babies delivered by stats guru Hans Rosling that I posted on another thread.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/religions-and-babies/

csteele wrote

>>...why this is about Muslim countries and why we should note “that the first 12 countries in the table are all Muslim countries.”?>>

Oh, that's easy.

All my life I've been hearing these stories from both Muslims and people who fear Muslims that the womb is Islam's "secret weapon."

"We are going to outbreed you," says one group.

"They are going to outbreed us," says another.

I just wanted to point out two facts:

(1) There has been a precipitate decline in human fertility around most of the world

(2) Muslim countries are no exception to this. if anything Muslim societies have experienced a more rapid decline than most albeit starting from a higher base.

Back in the 1960s nobody I know expected TFRs to decline this fast.

Steven,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran

but just in (today's date)

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/08/03/230144.html

and

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/369798/20120802/iran-baby-boom-birth-control-khameini-fertility.htm

Steven and csteele

am I missing something here, or are you in fact in heated agreement that being Muslim is NOT a significant factor determining trends in fertility rates. If so, I'll happily agree with you both.

I enjoyed both the article and the linked presentation by Hans Rosling. Nice to get some fact-based argument into the population debate.

david f

Urbanisation does play a role. Back when I was part of a team calculating TFRs in South Africa we discovered that TFR for urban Black women was 2.8. For rural Black women it was 6.6. The difference was so great that we declined to publish until our findings could be independently verified. We had expected to find a difference but not of that magnitude.

mac

There could be an element of that in it.

Danielle

I'll be interested to see whether the Iranian government succeeds in raising TFR. Government programs to increase fertility generally causes a spike in births after which the downward trend continues.

In China there are loopholes around the one child policy. Attempts by some provincial and city governments to raise birthrates have failed. A small family culture seems to have taken hold.

Rhian

There is a strong link between religioisity and TFR among Christians, Jews and Muslims. After adjusting for differences in socio-economic status and education levels religious people seem to have, on average, more babies.

See:

Breeding for God

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/breedingforgod/

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century

http://www.amazon.com/Shall-Religious-Inherit-Earth-Twenty-First/dp/1846681448

The Amish in the US, for example, have much higher birthrates than secular Americans. A study of one Amish community in 2005 found a TFR of between 4 and 5, more than double the US TFR.

Mormons, too, seem to have more babies than their secular counterparts.

However just because a country is designated "Muslim" does not mean that everybody there is a true believer. Unlike the case in Western countries, infidels in places like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia may find it wise to fake it.

Dear Steve,
If there is a point to this article, I guess it is to ridicule people who worry about overpopulation.
There is a big diversity among muslim countries, in the rate and timing of their TFR decline. Those that had rapid early decline were those whose governments worried about overpopulation, and took action to minimise it. Indonesia, Bangladesh and Tunisia are examples. Iran did it much later, in the late 1980s.
Syria's fertility decline is paralleling Tunisia's, only about 15 years later. The cost of that delay is double the population: they were both about 4 million in 1960, Tunisia is now about 11 and Syria 22, way beyond its carrying capacity, totally dependent on global food markets and erupting into violence that is only superficially political. Worrying about overpopulation, and promoting family planning, before hitting the wall, has been a very effective strategic move.
Who would have predicted such declines in 1960? Silly us. Could be that we didn't have the pill then. How can you blame people for not anticipating a fall for which there was not yet the technology to achieve?
If you are really so confident that overpopulation is not a risk, read Jeremy Grantham's latest quarterly essay at http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/GMOQ2Letter.pdf

Game, set and match to jos.
How do these 'opinion' pieces see the light of day?

Dear Stevenlmeyer,

As my Mighty Catters have just beaten the Hawks by kicking the winning goal after the siren in an absolute thriller I am certainly of no mind to to do anything but thank you for your answer.

And while I'm not a believing sort of guy God is definitely in her heaven, all is right with the world and the Kennett Curse is alive and well.

Dear jos,

In the spirit of looking before I leap can I ask you why you think that Syria's population of 22 million is 'way beyond its carrying capacity'?

For the dozen years before the run of bad seasons starting in 2008 it had a healthy and growing wheat export sector.

It has a third of the population density of its near neighbour Israel. Would you label Israel in the same fashion? If not why not?

Jos

I am not setting out to ridicule anybody. I'm merely pointing out the facts such as they are.

You wrote:

>>Who would have predicted such declines in 1960? Silly us. Could be that we didn't have the pill then.>>

In western countries declines in TFR predate the pill by many decades. The "post war baby boom" was noted precisely because it was an unexpected upturn in birth rates that had been in long term decline.

I do not know to what extent the availability of the pill affected declines in TFR in poorer countries. I'm sure it played a role. However I am equally sure that so did urbanisation. The gap in TFR between urban and rural Black women in South Africa to which I alluded in my post above opened up before the pill was available.

The most powerful contraceptive of all seems to be electrification.

The Fascist regime in Italy was very keen on electrification. They brought electricity to certain regions of rural Italy which promptly experienced a plunge in birth rates much to Mussolini's disgust. He wanted them to produce babies who would be the future soldiers of his reborn Roman Empire.

All this happened prior to the pill.

For a more recent example of this phenomenon see:

Do birth rates go down when the lights are on?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12337010

I am sure the advent of the pill played a role. Perhaps even more so the advent of cheap, safe, legal abortion. But there are many factors at work here.

BTW abortion is an interesting one. It was illegal in South Africa when I was growing up. However many midwives were skilled abortionists and reasonably priced abortions were available to anyone who wanted one. As we have seen with drugs, making something illegal does not mean it is unavailable.

PopulationParty wrote:

>>How do these 'opinion' pieces see the light of day?>>

LOL

You'll have to ask Graham. I just write the stuff

Csteele

Glad I was able to set your mind at rest.

William, you should know how articles like this get published, you've had two published yourself. This article is better than most that we publish. It is interesting and provides facts that I was not aware of. It contradicts the claims of some that immigrants from Islamic countries will have a disproportionate impact because of higher fertility rates. That on its own is enough to justify it.

I think we all also have an interest in knowing how fertility is playing out and what impact that has on forecasts of future growth. This site is about discussion and debate, and Steven has provided a welcome addition to that.

Graham, thank you for your kind words.

A few extra points.

The TFR of immigrant groups is not the same as TFR in the groups' home country. Sometimes it's a bit higher, sometimes a bit lower.

Unfortunately I do not have any Australian data. However a British study shows TFR convergence between immigrant groups and indigenous groups.

Here are some sample findings.

TFR: 1987 - 1994 VERSUS 2000 - 2006

White British: 1.90 --> 1.85

Pakistani: 3.3 --> 2.9

Banglasdeshi: 4.3 --> 3.1

(Fertility by ethnic and religious groups in the UK, trends in a multi-cultural context, Sylvie Dubuc 2009)

The first number shows TFR for women during the period 1987 to 1994, the second over the period 2000 to 2006. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are the two largest immigrant groups in Britain from identifiably Muslim countries. As you can see TFR for both these groups, though well above that for white British women, is declining.

The decline in TFR in poor countries is likely to have profound effects on migration to Western countries. Many pundits have commented on the decline in the number of illegal immigrants attempting to cross from Mexico into the US. This is partly due to enhanced border patrols. But the decline in Mexican TFR from 6.78 in 1960 to the current level of 2.27 probably plays a role. It is young desperate men who formed the bulk of the illegal immigrants.

A word of caution. We have been discussing average TFRs. Within each country and, indeed, within each ethnicity there are subgroups with unusually high and unusually low TFRs. For all groups and subgroups there seems to be little doubt that the very religious tend to have more babies than the average.

I believe that it mainly comes down to education of women and opportunities for them in the work place. When women have other options, they stop having children. Religion has little to do with it.
Contrary to popular belief, Iranian women are well educated and have valuable roles in the work place. Therefore low birth rates. Afghanistan women on the other hand have little or no education and few opportunities for careers and have extremely high birth rates.
Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the world despite them being Roman catholic and supposedly rejecting birth control.
I read today that Iran is about to try to increase its birth rate. I think they will fail. Women with opportunities and careers are unlikely to decide to stay home and have loads of children.

Dear Steven,

You wrote;

“All my life I've been hearing these stories from both Muslims and people who fear Muslims that the womb is Islam's "secret weapon."”

I totally accept that as an immigrant with a Jewish heritage that those concerns would have been and still are very influential in your world view. The fear you speak of is evidently the reason for the very high fertility rates we are seeing from women within the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, it is now purportedly over 4.

While those concerns certainly have a growing currency within Europe I would claim that outside consumers of right-wing media, fundamentalist Christians, and the misinformed or wilfully ignorant groups here in Australia they are not as much an issue.

Traditionally our fears here have been couched in terms of 'The Yellow Peril', 'The Hordes from the North', and 'The Asian Invasion'. What is interesting about Hans' video is that the great Asian population centres of India and China have not only seen dramatic falls in fertility rates but also that those drops have a far greater impact on the total number of human beings in the world than the Muslim countries you listed.

I'm not discounting that our nearest neighbour Indonesia is a Muslim country but what would be comforting I think to those who hold 'traditional fears' in this country is the fact that the masses of humanity in all three populations to our north are not on exponential trajectories. I find it startling to learn that a third of the states in India have fertility rates equal to or under our own.

I understand the space constraints but perhaps including a form of your explanation to me in your article may have helped the average reader to understand where you were coming from.

stevenmeyer,

"In western countries declines in TFR predate the pill by many decades."

Particularly in France where the TFR started to decline a century before the pill. As usual, there are various explanations, I'll leave it to the demographers--it's interesting to consider why the phenomenon occurred earlier in France than the UK.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12159012

Dear csteele,
The latest available stats from FAO on Syria's food balance says:
2009 - millions of tonnes of cereals - Production 4.7, Import 5.2, Stock variation -2.0, Export 0.05 gives domestic supply at 7.8.
In 2005 they still imported over a third of total cereal supply, although they were approximately self-sufficient for wheat (only 10% of which was exported, and some also imported). Regardless of weather, those days are unlikely to return, as their water resources are overallocated and they've added over 3 million to their population since 2005.

Would I put Israel in the same category? Certainly - and more so. They bang on about having greened the desert, but they overshot that capacity some time ago, they already use every drop of water in the Jordan at least once and are sucking out groundwater to the extent of causing coastal salt intrusion, yet still trying to outbreed the Palestinians, especially on the West Bank.

Dear Steven,
You are right that the pill is not the whole story. But the speed at which fertility decline started happening in receptive poor countries from the late 1960s was largely due to the availability of the pill, and to the level of concern about population growth that ensured aid was provided for getting family planning messages and contraceptives to poor communities. There is a strong correlation between contraception prevalence and TFR, with the exceptions being countries with ready access to abortion, who have achieved low TFR without high contraception prevalence - the Eastern Block countries in particular. You are right, that abortion is available everywhere, and it has always been a significant factor in avoiding unwanted births. Nothing reduces the demand for abortion as much as contraception prevalence.

Education and economic opportunity for women certainly helps, but more as a synergistic element with family planning than as a force itself. Electrification also can have a demonstrated effect. But all these things are more often mentioned in order to imply that family planning programs are unnecessary, than to demonstrate synergies.

My point is that there is no mystery. Fertility reduction, in nationsl of any religious variety, has primarily been driven by voluntary family planning programs (including China, where the TFR drop was mostly in the decade before the one-child policy), and these programs have been primarily supported due to concern about population growth - not, as the UN's more recent agenda advocates, for the sake of women's health and reproductive rights. These programs have greatly improved women's health, reproductive rights, autonomy and economic participation, and for the practitioners delivering the programs, these are key motivations. But for the governments funding them, concern about overpopulation was the essential motivator, and not without reason since population growth rate is an enormous drag on development.

So, everyong who downplays concern about overpopulation is hampering development in high-fertility countries.