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