Can anyone explain the fertility rate of central Asia bucking the typical demographic shift trend?

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[–]IslamofascistDeath to America, Death to Israel, Death to The Ukraine 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Islamic resurgence plus expanding economies. It's most notable in the case of Uzbekistan. During the Soviet and immediate post-Soviet period, Uzbek fertility rates collapsed from nearly 7 kids per woman to just over 2 kids per woman. This was due to poor economy plus promotion of secularization, female education, and birth control. Since the 2000s, the number of practicing Muslims has increased significantly and the economy has also grown quite rapidly, averaging nearly 7% GDP growth per year. The result is increasing fertility rates.

If I had to weight those two variables, I would give much bigger weight to religion and culture than economics, because other countries that also saw rapid economic growth did not see increased fertility rates. China is the most obvious example. China's economy grew even faster, yet Chinese fertility rates fell by nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 2020, from 2.51 to 1.28. So clearly, an expanding economy is not sufficient to induce people to reproduce. There also needs to be a sociocultural preference for starting families and making babies.

[–]ifuckredditsnitches_Resident Pajeet 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Doesn't explain why gulf countries are relatively low. I would say a large component is access to space. Similar reason why Africa is still expanding despite not being pious in their religion at all.

[–]LGBTQIAIDSAnally Injected Death Sentence 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Indeed. Some Muslim countries like Bahrain, Iran, and Qatar are below replacement level, and the UAE is far below replacement level. So we can rule out any strong version of this claim, e.g. that Muslim culture automatically ensures high fertility. The question is thus whether any weaker version of this claim is correct.

I suspect that it is not. Tajikistan, for instance, banned the hijab back in 2017. In February 2004, Turkmenistan banned men from wearing long hair and beards for anti-Islamist reasons, although that regulation has been said to have been loosening over time. Uzbekistan defeated a Taliban-friendly Islamist insurgency of its own.

These countries (excluding Kyrgyzstan) have usually been much closer to following the authoritarian, nativist, and personalist path, although Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan seem to have moved on a liberal path since the departures from power of Nazarbayev and Karimov. That leaves Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as the more 'based' countries of Central Asia, at least insofar as governments are concerned.

In Tajikistan's case, I suspect that the persistence of nativism is responsible. Tajikistan has been just as anti-Russian as anti-Muslim, for example, President Emomali Rahmon's name was Emomali Rahmonov until he had the last two letters removed for nativist reasons, and, in April 2016, Tajik parents were banned from giving Russian-style names to their newborn children. Basically, Tajikistan's governmental policies have moved the country somewhat closer to those of an ethnostate.

One reason that I suspect that Islam is not responsible is that Turkmenistan is probably the least anti-Muslim country of all five Central Asian countries. For instance, it was one of the few countries around the world to have been on good terms with the Taliban. But Turkmenistan's demographic trends are actually rather unimpressive compared to those in the less Islamic Kazakhstan in particular. Should Islam be the determinant of these trends, Turkmenistan should really be the most impressive of the five rather than the least, and Kazakhstan should really be the least impressive of the five rather than the most.

In Kazakhstan's case, this miracle of sorts clearly happened during Nazarbayev's long rule. Since I think that nativism is more likely to be the determinant, I do wonder if Nazarbayev was more of a nativist than I thought.