Fertility rates:
Iran 1.8
Turkey 1.92
Morocco 2.68
Algeria 1.89
Tunisia 1.74
Libya 3.28
Egypt 2.83
Jordan 2.63
Syria 3.4
Saudi Arabia 4.0
Yemen 6.58
Israel 2.41
Four to seven? Forget about correlation and causation, what correlation? And how about learning how to read numbers? I count two countries in the Middle East and North Africa with a fertility rate at four or above with a couple below two and a whole slew between two and three. Let's take France, let's take Turkey, Tunisia, or Iran - do the latter genuinely have more generous social security systems? Sub-Saharan Africa, sure, but if most developing countries are seeing rapidly falling fertility rates, and one region retains high birth rates, maybe it one should look at some factor specific to the region in question?
Is that because said "Islamofascists" are coming over to France just to have their babies over here? Sneaky, sneaky... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
On the other side of the correlation spectrum, you have of course, this... The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
But I loved that quote:
Throughout its modern history France has been obsessed about population levels. Experts have established that around the time of the revolution, French mothers stopped breeding - no one knows why - and a population that had been the largest in Europe fell during the 19th century behind Britain and the emerging Germany.
The Révolution is the cause of France's decline... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Try all you like, my fine French friend, but you can't fight facts.
It was a pretty serious concern during the Third Republic, particularly on the right.
The Révolution is the cause of France's decline...
The explanation I've seen most often is that the land inheritance laws of the Napoleonic Code were a factor, combined with the fact that so much of France's population was made up of small landowners.
What I don´t understand is how it can be the cause of it, because in theory the diminution of infantile mortality is the main factor and has to come first.
Anyway, France had his demographic boost - lot of active people in the population, less dependant one with less children and not many elders yet - at the end of 18th /beginning of the 19th and squandered it through the revolutionnary and napoleonic wars, and was a bit too early - already stabilized - for riding the industrial revolution.
The third republic obsession with natality was real, and can be easily understood: if for 30 years you were an outlier with less natality, were crushed by expanding neighbours and could not conceive that they will slow their natality one day too, you could have felt uneasy... La répartie est dans l'escalier. Elle revient de suite.
you are the media you consume.
It is really disgusting.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
