Challenges and Opportunities-The Population of the Middle East and North Africa

Population Bulletin, Jun 2007 by Roudi-Fahimi, Farzaneh, Kent, Mary Mederios

The countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) continue to fascinate and concern the rest of the world. With two-thirds of the world's known petroleum reserves, the region's economic and political importance far outweighs its population size. It has the worlds second-fastest growing population, after subSaharan Africa. Its demographic trends - especially the rapidly growing youth population - are complicating the region's capacity to adapt to social change, economic strains, and sometimes wrenching political transformations.

The people of the Middle East and North Africa have long played an integral, if sometimes volatile, role in the history of human civilization. Three of the world's major religions originated in the region - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. MENA contains some of the world's oldest cities; universities existed here long before they emerged in Europe. Today, the population is overwhelmingly Islamic, yet includes substantial Jewish and Christian minorities. And, while Arabic is the predominant language, two of the region's largest countries - Iran and Turkey - and Israel, are not Arabic-speaking.

Thanks to rapidly declining death rates and slowly declining fertility rates, MENA's population size quadrupled in the last half of the 20th century. It stands at about 430 million in 2007. Despite recent fertility declines, MENA's population is projected to surpass 700 million by 2050.

One consequence of the region's recent demographic trends is an increasingly notable youth bulge. One in every three people living in the region is between ages 10 and 24. This young population provides momentum for continued population growth in the region, despite declining fertility.

This large crop of young people also needs jobs and training - in a region currently plagued by high unemployment. While the youth bulge offers a potential demographic dividend - a temporary surge in the proportion of working-age adults in the population that can boost economic growth - there are many obstacles to reaping this windfall. High unemployment, a mismatch of jobs and skill levels, extensive government entitlements, and political instability are among the factors that have made it difficult for the young MENA population to spur economic growth. In addition, citizens must compete with foreigners for jobs in some Persian Gulf countries where one-half or more of the labor force consists of foreign workers.

Whether this large group of young people become healthy and productive members of their societies will depend on how well governments and civil societies invest in social, economic, and political institutions that meet their needs. The fastest growth in the youth population will be in places that are the least prepared economically: Iraq, the Palestinian Territory, and Yemen.

Population growth has also exacerbated natural resource constraints in the region. Most MENA countries already are designated as water scarce because they fall below the international threshold of 1 ,000 cubic meters of freshwater per capita per year. Environmental factors threaten the region's continued economic development and the well-being of the population. Water scarcity can potentially lead to conflicts both among countries and among population groups within a country, adding to the political instability of the region.

What Defines the Middle East and North Africa?

There is no standard definition of the Middle East.1 The term was used by the British in the late 1 9th century to refer to the Persian Gulf region. By 1950, the Middle East included not only Iran, Israel, and the Arab states of Western Asia, but also Cyprus, Egypt, and Turkey. The boundaries are sometimes stretched eastward to take in Afghanistan and westward as far as Morocco.

The area covered in this Population Bulletin includes 20 countries in Western Asia and North Africa (see Figure 1). The boundaries are defined by geography rather than religion, ethnicity, or other socioeconomic characteristics. Thus, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) includes the non-Arab countries of Iran, Israel, and Turkey. MENA countries fall into three general subregions: North Africa, Western Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula. These subregions do not correspond exactly to the United Nations (UN) regions with the same names.

The majority of the region's population lives in the MENA Western Asian countries, particularly Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey (see Table 1). The Western Asian countries are highly culturally and religiously diverse.

While Arabs are overwhelmingly Muslim in most of the region, there are exceptions. About one-fourth of Lebanon's population is made up of Arab Christians. Sunni Muslims are the majority in the region, with Shia Muslims a majority in Iran and Iraq. About 20 percent of Israel's population is Arab, and they are overwhelmingly Muslim.

The countries on the Arabian Peninsula have small populations, which nevertheless grew rapidly between the 1950s and 2007, and are projected to continue to grow rapidly over the next 50 years. These countries included about 59 million people in 2007, with 80 percent living in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. All the Arabian Peninsula countries except Yemen border on the Persian Gulf.