By Fazeena Saleem
DOHA: Fertility levels have declined in Arab countries and reasons behind it are yet to be discovered, political economist and demographer Nicolas Eberstadt said yesterday.
East Asia and Europe experienced decline in fertility because of rapid economic growth and the practice of modern day family planning methods. These conditions are not applicable for Arab countries.
“Arab countries have not experienced a rapid economic growth as East Asia and family planning is not encouraged in Muslim societies,” said Eberstadt, also an adviser at the American Enterprise Institute and National Bureau of Asian Research.
He will hold a workshop today for a panel of experts on ‘Fertility decline in the Muslim world’ organised by Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development (DIIFSD).
According to data released by UNDP, six of the 10 largest absolute declines in fertility for a two-decade period yet recorded in the post-war-era have occurred in Muslim-majority countries.
The four very largest of these absolute declines happened in Muslim-majority countries, each entailing a decline of over 4.5 births per woman in just 20 years.
Arabs are getting married late and fewer than in the past. And the situation is in contrast with that in non-Arab countries. Unfortunately, this demographic change goes largely unnoticed, he said.
“The situation is similar to post-war Europe, which was recently seen in modern East Asian societies. Although cohabitation before marriage or having children outside a marriage is not evident in Arab societies.
“Studies have shown that certain patterns in marriages that first began emerging in post-war Europe and more recently in the 1980s evident in modern East Asian societies are now beginning to emerge within the Arab world,” Eberstadt told The Peninsula on the sidelines of a lecture ‘The Flight from Marriage: Has it Come to the Arab World?’ organised by DIIFSD.
“There is a dramatic rise in the age women are getting married and the percentage of postponing marriage or avoiding it has also increased,” Eberstadt said.
These patterns, called ‘flight from marriage’ include the rise in the singulate female age at marriage (the average length of single life expressed in years among those who get married before 50), the fall in total first marriage rates and the rise in total divorce rates.
In Arab-Muslim societies, the average age of women getting married has risen to 30. And 20 percent of women at 40 never get married, while some new marriages end in divorce. In contrast, in some non-Arab Muslim countries, the average age of women getting married remains under 24.
“Family is the basic bedrock of society. But this concept is changing, and it is important to understand and know what changes are happening in society,” said Eberstadt.
“A sea change has been hidden. Not recognised or discussed by policymakers. Any dramatic change in society going unnoticed by policymakers is a risk,” he warned.
Eberstadt said that the reasons behind changes happening in Arab societies could be due to several factors based on socio-economic aspects of a society. The Peninsula
