Nicholas Eberstadt, the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, is author of Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition and his more recent report, Lessons for an Unserious Superpower. He spoke to a February 24 Middle East Forum Podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
The declining fertility in Arabic-speaking countries is a result of the “huge flight from marriage” by both men and women.
According to a Pew Research Center poll, the total global Muslim population was estimated to be at 2 billion worldwide in 2020, but there has been a marked change in Muslim-majority countries—in keeping with the rest of the world—namely “a huge plunge in fertility.” Countries including Turkey, Iran, Tunisia, Lebanon, Morocco, and Algeria are below replacement levels necessary for “population stability to continue.” The decline is due to limits in family size based on “how many children women say they want,” with some of the Middle Eastern countries loosening restrictions on the use of contraception. The declining fertility in Arabic-speaking countries is a result of the “huge flight from marriage” by both men and women. This shift may be attributable to the “proliferation of internet usage” and the prevalence of “smartphone usage also radically saturating many of these societies.”
Future projections for Turkey will see a decline in the ethnic Turkish population, which is far below replacement levels, even as the Kurdish population in Turkey has a much higher birthrate. There will therefore be a large shift in “proportions of ethnic population” in the years ahead. Iran is below replacement level, which will eventually lead to population decline “unless there’s compensating immigration.” The Iranian “youth bulge” that peaked in 2008-09 is declining when compared to its neighbors in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This drop will have regional security implications for the regime’s future.
The Palestinian Arab population increase that threatened Israel with a “demographic bomb” that would overwhelm the number of Israelis has not occurred. The Palestinian Arab high fertility rate has been steadily declining, while over the last generation, “the Israeli-Jewish fertility level has actually been rising.”
The Palestinian Arab population increase that threatened Israel with a “demographic bomb” that would overwhelm the number of Israelis has not occurred.
Overall, “with prolonged sub-replacement fertility, we’re on the track to see the working age populations of a number of places in the Middle East peak in the 2030s,” along with a “pronounced graying” of the population in these countries. “So the youth bulge is going to mutate into a senior bulge, into a gray wave” with the attendant health issues of chronic diseases that accompany advanced age. Middle Eastern countries with “radically lower income levels than the U.S.” will have to grapple with the challenge of meeting the financial drain that a graying population will present.
Generally, declines in fertility rates are commensurate with the “spread of secular thinking, with the retreat of religion.” Accordingly, “we still see a very strong correspondence between high fertility among people who say that religion and worship matter in their lives, and lower fertility among those who say that they don’t.” In Iran, where “we’ve seen sub-replacement fertility for more than a generation,” mosques are closing due to a lack of demand. This tracks with a rise in secularism, which may have contributed to declining fertility rates. Most of the population boom in the Middle East was attributable not to changes in fertility but was “mainly caused by the improvements in health” and accompanying declines in mortality rates.
The discrepancy between the high fertility rates of the immigrant population relative to that of the host population offers evidence that “assimilation is not underway.”
Europe is a “mixed bag” when it comes to the “demographic profile” of Muslims coming from Muslim-majority countries who moved there. The discrepancy between the high fertility rates of the immigrant population relative to that of the host population offers evidence that “assimilation is not underway.” Thus, in Belgium, the Moroccan immigrant fertility rate is twice as high as the native Belgian population’s rate. “That doesn’t look like assimilation to me.” However, in the Netherlands, Indonesian immigrants have a slightly lower fertility rate than the native Dutch.
In the U.K., compared to the native-born population, Indian Muslims have slightly lower fertility rates, while Muslims from Bangladesh have slightly higher rates. In contrast, Pakistani Muslims in the U.K. have fertility rates that are approximately twice as high as those of the native-born population. In France, demographers have been unable to access data on fertility rates of immigrants “and fertility by religion” because it is a sensitive issue with the French government. The Gender and Generations Survey, which is conducted internationally, indicates that French Muslims have a 50 percent higher birth rate than others in France, and that as a population, they have not entirely assimilated locally.
