Iraq is witnessing a gradual demographic transformation, the features of which are beginning to appear in the size of families and birth rates, after fertility rates recorded a clear decline in recent decades, in an indication of changing lifestyles and the social and economic conditions of Iraqi families.
Demographic expert and Director General of Technical Affairs at the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, Qusay Abdel Fattah Raouf, told Al Jazeera that population growth rates have begun to witness a clear decline, coinciding with the decline in family size and the decline in fertility rates.
Comparing the numbers reveals the scale of this transformation. While Iraqi women were giving birth on average to about six children in 1997, the 2024 census showed a decline in the fertility rate to about 3.1 births for women aged 15 to 49 years. In parallel, the average family size declined from seven or eight individuals previously to about five individuals.
This decline does not occur in isolation from the transformations witnessed by Iraqi society, as Raouf links it to rising levels of urbanization and education, as urban areas and governorates with higher levels of education record lower fertility rates. Women’s entry into the labor market, along with changing economic, social and cultural conditions, also contributed to reshaping families’ choices regarding the number of children and timing of childbearing.
Population contraction stage
But the decline in fertility does not mean that Iraq has entered a stage of population contraction, as the rate of 3.1 births per woman is still higher than the population replacement level of 2.1, which is the level at which the population, under other constant conditions, maintains its size from one generation to the next.
Thus, the population momentum in Iraq continues, but at a slower pace, and the population projections of the Ministry of Planning indicate that the decline may continue during the coming decades, with the fertility rate expected to decline to about 2.3 births per woman by the year 2050, gradually approaching the replacement level.
According to Raouf, the authorities do not raise the issue of determining the number of children, but rather the treatment is directed towards family planning and reproductive health, by spreading awareness among women and men, encouraging healthy birth spacing, reducing early marriage and pregnancy, and reducing unplanned pregnancies.
The educational and economic empowerment of women is one of the important factors in this path, as census data showed that the level of education is linked to the family’s ability to plan the number of births, at a time when the rate of early marriage among women has reached about 24%, with a trend towards decline.
Today, Iraq is not facing a crisis of population decline, but rather a shift in the form of population growth itself. Smaller families, lower fertility, and births are gradually declining, on a path that may lead, by the middle of the century, to approaching the population replacement level, opening the door to a demographic phase different from the one that Iraq has experienced during the past decades.