Arab Political Demography: Population Growth, Labor Migration and Natalist Policies (revised and expanded third edition) by Onn Winckler (review)

Onn Winckler’s Arab Political Demography is an ambitious book which seeks to assess the complex links between demography and politics in the Arab countries from the mid-20th century until present day. The strength of this book, written mainly for researchers and students, lies in the detailed compilation of demographic data and an extensive bibliography that includes academic publications, reports from United Nations agencies, statements of national population policies, and remarks from political leaders.

The book opens with an overview of demographic transition theory as a framework to interpret historical and current demographic trends in the world’s different regions and situate the Arab countries in the global demographic picture. The classical formulation of the theory states that, when experiencing modernization, societies move from a pre-transitional regime of high mortality and high fertility to a post-transitional one in which both mortality and fertility are low. Winckler presents a classification of world’s regions in different stages of demographic transition and lists some contextual factors which help explain the specificities of each region. He fails to highlight that, beyond variations in timing and pace, the transition appears to have the same essential form everywhere.¹ In short, mortality decline is the initiating process, fertility decline follows somewhat later, and this sequence causes a period of population growth in between.

The second chapter retraces the evolution in the quantity and quality of data sources for demographic research in Arab countries. Winckler exposes how political considerations have made the governments of several of these countries unwilling to either collect or disseminate data on sensitive demographic factors. The most notable examples are Qatar, where authorities publish figures for the total resident population but do not disclose disaggregated data for nationals and nonnationals, and Lebanon, where the only census was held in 1932 and no official data are available on the religious composition of the population after that time. Winckler discusses several other cases of a politically motivated dearth of data. Surprisingly, he does not mention the case of Iraq, where the last countrywide census dates back 30 years and plans to conduct a new census have been postponed indefinitely amid fears of increasing ethnic tension over the disputed territories.²

Chapter 3 examines demographic trends based on the available data. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Arab countries witnessed markedly accelerated rates of population growth owing to a steady decrease in mortality along with persistently high fertility. While in the vast majority of countries in Asia and Latin America the transition from high to low fertility began during the 1960s and 1970s, in most Arab countries it did not begin until the 1980s. Since then, the average number of births per woman has dropped dramatically, slowing the rates of population growth. Nevertheless, Winckler notes that Lebanon and Tunisia are the only Arab countries to have reached their replacement-level fertility of around two births per woman. He points out that in Egypt, Jordan, and Algeria the fertility decline has stalled at an average of about three births per woman in recent years. The fertility decline has also come to a halt in Iraq at an average of over four births per woman.³

The fourth chapter analyzes the demographic and political factors leading to the emergence of the “Arab employment dilemma.” Winckler argues that during the oil decade not only were oil-rich Arab countries caught in the rentier trap, but so were nonoil Arab countries. The latter were entrapped because their economic expansion was driven by exogenous sources, namely substantial financial aid received from oil-rich countries and large-scale labor migration to those countries. With the fall in oil prices in the 1980s, both sources of income collapsed and non-oil Arab countries found themselves increasingly less able to provide job opportunities to large number of young new entrants to the labor market...