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  • Title: Levels and trends in the fertility and mortality of Palestinians in the Middle East.
    Author: Hill AG.
    Journal: Popul Bull ECWA; 1982; (22-23):31-70. PubMed ID: 12266316.
    Abstract:
    Comparison of fertility and mortality levels among Palestinians in the Middle East is not easy because of the variety of demographic indices, direct and indirect, used in the different data sets. Standardization of the measures is difficult because some of the populations (i.e., in refugee camps) are partial populations, due to migration, naturalization, and definitional problems. Mortality figures show that the only reliable series for crude death rate is for the Muslims of Palestine and Israel; falling from the high 20s before 1930 to less than 6/1000 after 1970. Childhood mortality estimates are the measure of mortality used for comparison. The decline in child mortality among Palestinian Muslims is clearcut. Since 1948 the speed of the decline has slackened and in the late 1970s was still approximately 20 points above the rate for Jews. Elsewhere the decline started later, but the speed of the decline seems extraordinarily rapid after 1960. Steep declines in the infant mortality in camp populations seem unreasonably rapid. Despite the generally low socioeconomic status of camp dwellers, it seems that the health services and care offered to refugees by the UN Relief and Works Agency for the Refugees of Palestine (UNRWA) are effective in controlling infant and childhood mortality. Best data for crude birthrates and total fertility rates are also for Muslims of Palestine and Israel. These show a slow upward trend in total fertility from 1925-48, with a much steeper rise until the mid-1960s. Thereafter fertility seems to have fallen. After some minor fluctuations in fertility in the West Bank and Gaza during 1967-73, the trend appears to be downward thereafter. The Palestinian community in Kuwait had high fertility in terms of the crude birthrate in 1970, but when expressed as a total fertility rate the values are close to the total fertility rates for Gaza and the West Bank at the same time. Palestinian fertility is showing signs of a recent fall among younger cohorts only; the leaders being the Arab urban Christians, then the urban Muslims, followed by the Arab rural Muslims, and finally the populations of Gaza and the West Bank.
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