Article
Review: Review of Arab Political Demography, Vol. 1: Population Growth and Natalist Policies, ONN WINCKLER, Sussex Academic Press
Regional Studies
(2006)
Abstract
This volume should be required reading for understanding the demographic challenges the Arab World confronts to achieve much desired long-term economic growth and political stability. Further, it demonstrates how these challenges have been exacerbated by the geographic concentration of extraordinary resource wealth that has slowed the process of the demographic transition. In short, the great oil wealth of the 1970s and early 1980s enabled the Arab states to turn a blind eye or even challenge and prosperity and, hence, the need for aggressive family planning. Instead, for a wide variety of reasons pro-natalist policies reigned either explicitly or implicitly. For example, oil-rich nations argued that a larger population would lead to greater security through a reduction in imported labour. For Kuwait, this resulted in a stubbornly high fertility rate of 4.4 in 2000 (second only to Oman among the oil-rich states at 4.9), but accompanied by a foreign worker population that has steadily grown since its nadir after the forced expulsions following the first Iraqi War in 1991. By 2000, it had climbed back to 62% of total population (or around 80% of the workforce), despite a nearly 50% increase in the native-born population during the same decade. On the other hand, non-oil Arab nations used these high-paying outside jobs to siphon-off surplus labour. Some so successfully, such as Jordon, that it in turn imported cheaper labour from neighbouring Syria to replace its own out-migrants working in oil-rich states.
Keywords
- Arab World demography,
- Economic growth,
- Political stability
Disciplines
Publication Date
2006
Citation Information
Patrick H. Buckley. "Review: Review of Arab Political Demography, Vol. 1: Population Growth and Natalist Policies, ONN WINCKLER, Sussex Academic Press" Regional Studies Vol. 40 Iss. 4 (2006) p. 431 - 432 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/patrick-buckley/20/