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Education as contraception
By Tamara Traubman
The data is impressive. Over the past five years, the number of births
per thousand in Israel's Muslim community has dropped 13 percent, from
38 to 33. During the same period, the number of births per thousand in
Israel's majority Jewish community has risen. The merger of these two
facts is, at least on the surface, of great interest. The gap between
the number of births per thousand in Israel's Muslim community and in
the Jewish community has narrowed from 110 to 70 percent. Do these figures
mark the end of Israel's "demographic headache"? Bottom-line
answer: No.
The births-per-thousand figure, all demographers concur, is of very
limited importance. It cannot be used to gauge fertility. Nonetheless,
other figures bearing greater statistical importance point to the beginning
of a change.
While the fertility rate among Israeli Jewish women has not declined
and has even slightly risen, there are initial signs of a downward trend
in that category among Israeli Muslim women. The figure to which demographers
attach the greatest significance is the decline in the average number
of children per female. According to Devorit Angel, the Central Bureau
of Statistics' official responsible for the analysis of childbirth trends,
after 15 years during which the fertility rate in Israel's Muslim population
remained stable at 4.7 children per female, a slight decline has emerged
in recent years and the figure in 2003 was 4.5.
Another way of looking at the data is to focus on the average increase
in the number of births. Whereas the average annual increase in the number
of births during most of the previous decade was 4 percent, the increase
over the past five years was only 1.5 percent.
Could this be the beginning of a trend? According to Angel and Hebrew
University of Jerusalem Demographics Prof. Dov Friedlander, a trend may
be in the offing, "although these figures must be perceived from
a perspective of eight to 10 years," notes Friedlander, "and
they must be approached with great caution because they could skyrocket
again next year."
Angel argues that the fertility decline trend was expected because there
is a general tendency toward lower fertility in all modern societies.
Furthermore, she states, "The decline can be viewed more effectively
if we examine the Muslim population separately from the Bedouin population,
where the fertility rate is very high - about nine children per female.
Thus, for example, in Umm al-Fahm, the fertility rate declined from 4.4
children per female in 1996 to 4.0 in 2003. In contrast, the fertility
rate rose in Taibeh from 3.8 to 4.1 children.
Prof. Naomi Carmon says that in Haifa, the Israeli city with the lowest
fertility rate, the average number of children in 2001 per Muslim female
was 3.08 and per Christian Arab female was 1.91. For comparison's sake,
the average number of children per Israeli Jewish female is 2.7. "One
reason for the city's low fertility rate is Haifa's lower rate of religiosity
and its educational level, which is the highest in Israel," explains
Carmon who heads the Center for Urban and Regional Studies in the Faculty
of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion-Israel Institute of
Technology in Haifa.
Israel's birth rate of three children per female is the highest of any
of the world's developed nations and is actually closer to the rates for
developing nations, such as India and Peru. It is higher than the birth
rates for Algeria, Turkey, Lebanon and Brazil. The highest birth rate
in Israel is to be found among ultra-Orthodox Jewish females (according
to one estimate, nearly eight children per female) and Bedouin females
(eight to nine children per female). However, among Bedouin females, the
figures on paper are higher than what they are in reality because of inaccurate
recording. Among Jewish settlers too, the fertility rate exceeds the national
average and was 4.8 children per female in 2003.
The most dramatic drop has occurred among Israeli Druze women. Within
a single decade, the average number of children per female plummeted from
4.1 to 2.9. According to Carmon, it seems reasonable to assume that the
primary reason is the increase in educational level. Carmon: "Throughout
the world, the most effective contraceptive is education for women. All
other methods have failed. When the education level rises, the number
of children decreases." In 1961, 50 percent of all Druze women had
zero years of schooling, while, in 1990, only 13 percent had zero years
of schooling - and these women were all elderly. All young Druze women
today have had at least some schooling. "In fact," notes Carmon,
"one would have naturally expected an even greater impact on fertility;
however, because of such factors as cultural traditions and the proximity
of young couples' homes to those of their families, the decline has been
relatively slow."
The case of the Druze, points out Dr. Eliahu Ben-Moshe, a demographer
with the CBS and a Hebrew University lecturer, demonstrates that "all
that needs to be done is to integrate Arabs into society." Then the
demographic problem (the threat to Israel's Jewish majority) will disappear.
Dr. Ilana Ziegler, executive director of the Israel Family Planning
Association, notes that "the possibility of a decline in fertility
rates among Druze women was opened up when they were given the opportunity
to take control of their lives. A woman's having control of her own life
is the first condition needed for a reduction in fertility. Education
is a part of this but it is not the only component. She needs economic
independence, she must be able to make a proper living, she must be free
to love, to build her own life, and her health - including the promise
that the embryo she is carrying will be born a healthy infant and will
continue to live or that she can stop her pregnancy if she so decides
- must be guaranteed."
Israeli obsession
Geography professor, Oren Yiftachel of Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev in Be'er Sheva expresses scathing criticism for Israelis' "obsession"
with fertility: "We are obsessive because we are afraid Jews will
one day not constitute the majority in Israel." According to Yiftachel,
"In democracies, there are usually no head-counts because, in a multicultural
democracy, all citizens know that they have a place in the sun."
In the view of both Yiftachel and Friedlander, the Arab minority constituted
about a fifth of Israel's population during the 1950s. That situation
has remained constant over the years and that is the state of affairs
today as well. "Some countries," he observes, "have much
larger minorities relatively speaking." For instance, nearly 30 percent
of all Canadians are French-Canadian; 30 percent of Malaysia's citizens
are Chinese, with a long history of hostility between Malaysians and Chinese
in that country; and both Lithuania and Estonia have a hostile Russian
minority.
Reproduced with permission from ©Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/478066.html
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