He says women in particular need to participate more in the country’s development. He says Yemen has a large and rapidly growing working-age population right now, and the country could, in his opinion, see faster economic growth if young people were educated, in good health and able to find good jobs. Khaled, 51, says that the problem in his country, Yemen, is that population growth is outpacing “development growth”. “And I worry about what a lot of unemployed young people will mean for stability.”Ī key theme that emerged is that anxieties about population size are more often than not anxieties about being able to provide a good quality of life for everyone. “I worry about what will happen if one day the economy takes a downturn and people lose their jobs,” he says. This is not a problem, he believes, so long as the country’s economy remains strong enough to provide jobs, especially for unskilled labourers. Said (name changed), 45, says that the population of Oman may seem small compared to other countries in the region, but it’s growing fast, and it seems that people with fewer means are the ones having larger families. “It’s everyone’s right to have a child, but maybe it’s best to wait for the right conditions.”Rama hopes to one day adopt one of the country’s many children who have been orphaned or abandoned. She adds that many people facing hardship today are having children without the means to care for them. Conflict has weakened the social safety net. In her opinion, the population of Syria is too large for the level of services that are available. “There are too many things to worry about today: safety, security, economic security.” ![]() “I don’t want to give birth to a child while living in these times,” the 30-year-old Syrian explains. One woman, Rama (name changed), said yes. Have these trends affected people’s perceptions of population growth or influenced their decisions about having children? Interviews were conducted with several individuals from the Arab States, a region where a higher-than-average fertility rate (2.8 births per woman compared to the world’s average of 2.3) is occurring in the context of water scarcity concerns, accelerating desertification (Abumoghli and Goncalves, 2019), and frequent humanitarian crises. What does the general public think of this record number of people on the planet and how does this milestone affect them as individuals? How does it affect their communities and nations? ![]() The world’s population reached 8 billion in November 2022.
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