Via the Meria Journal, here’s yet another nail in the crib of the idea that Europe’s birth dearth is somehow a product of secularist despair:
Policymakers and the general public are only slow realizing that the Middle East’s long population boom is coming to an end. The Middle East is experiencing the same “demographic transition” to slow growth that hit Europe and North America a few generations ago, and Asia and Latin America in the last generation. In some countries, the change has been particularly dramatic. In Iran, the number of births has already dropped to half of the 1980s peak; 2,259,000 total births were registered in 1986/1987, while 2004/2005 had only 962,000.
Ah yes, Iran: hotbed of secularism.
This development is, of course, good news for the people that live there — as it is in any region, whether in the Middle East, Europe, or elsewhere, that succeeds in managing the transition to declining or even negative rates of population growth without succumbing either to natalist panic or to the foolish idea that mass immigration is the solution to the “problem” of an aging population.
So far as the wider implications for the Middle East are concerned, the report has much of interest to say. It’s well worth checking out.