مؤشرات خصوبة سكان دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي العربي

Abstract EN

In the past two decades, the population of the cooperation council for the Arab states of the Gulf has, virtually, experienced a substantial increase in fertility.

That is, an increase in the average number of children born per women living through the childbearing years.

Three interrelated indexes of fertility have been used to document the level of fertility in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Sultanate of Oman, the state of Kuwait the state of Qatar, and the state of Bahrain.

The indexes are: The crude birth rate (C.B.R), the general fertility rate (G.F.R), and the age-specific fertility rate (A.S.F.R).

The current spatial pattern of these countries crude birth rates vary from 31 in the United Arab Emirates to a high of 44 in the state of Kuwait.

All other countries do not stand in marked contrast to this pattern.

Given a normally fecund population , fertility, by considerable degree, is determined by a complex of factors, and different groups within a population may respond to similar factor in different ways.

Six independent variables are examined in this study.

These are: infant mortality rate, percentage of urban population, percentage of national women aged between 15-49 years, total number of working women as teachers, total female university students, and total female students enrolled in adult education and combating illiteracy centers.

Correlation coefficients among all of these variables are executed, and the relationship between crude birth rates and the six explanatory variables are tested, by using the step-wise multiple regression model.

The results indicate that fertility rates of the G.C.C states do not response to economic development, with its concomitant changes in social mobility, and increasing percentage of urban population.

Furthermore, modernized lifestyle, leading to social changes is not instrumental in causing the inverse relationship between the extension of education to women and fertility.

A possible explanation for the observed results is that, those experiencing high socioeconomic transformation can afford more of everything, including larger family size.

However, we must keep in mind that, fertility differentials of different types are probably not independent.

Thus, the high level of fertility rates in the G.C.C.

states can not yet be explained by any simple universally valid factor, or generalized description.