2013-01-25-Fertility-rate-drops-in-Afghanistan-but-will-it-continue-_ST_U.xml
^$^Afghanistan's fertility rate, one of the world's highest before the fall of the Taliban, is plummeting -- a concrete accomplishment of a decade-long U.S. campaign to improve the well-being of Afghan women.
The average number of children Afghan women can expect to have in their lifetime fell from eight in the 1990s to 6.3 in the mid-2000s and to 5.1 at the end of the decade, a USA TODAY analysis of birth data found.
The slide is significant, because the Taliban didn't allow girls to go to school, endorsed child brides and ignored women's health.
"You have basically a new generation of Afghan girls who are more likely to have delayed for a few years their marriage," says Patrick Gerland, a demographer at the United Nations Population Division.
Experts say one reason for the drop is that the ouster of the Taliban was followed by a rise in aid from NATO countries that funded schools, maternal health, family-planning services and birth control. Another is that the Taliban's ban on schooling for girls was lifted by the current government. As a result, more Afghan women are getting an education and jobs, factors that typically delay a woman's decision to start a family.
Also, infant mortality plunged 50% during the 1990s and into the mid-2000s, from 111 infant deaths per 1,000 live births to 55.
"It's a society that's really in the process of transforming itself," says Carl Haub, demographer at the Population Reference Bureau. "That's a very rapid transition."
As next year's drawdown of coalition forces nears, there is concern that progress might stall.
"If you have a return of much more conservative views that go back to a Taliban-type of thinking much of this progress could eventually roll back," Gerland says.
Afghanistan's fertility rate still is high. The U.S. is right about at two children per woman -- the replacement rate needed to keep the population stable -- and more developed regions as a whole are at 1.66.
High fertility makes it difficult for countries to reduce poverty and improve health, education and living conditions, Haub says.
A report on women in Afghanistan by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University stresses the need to protect the rights of women after international troops withdraw.
"If the trend of the last 10 years continues for one or two generations, it's very difficult to imagine going back to where it was, but you need 10 or 20 years of sustained change," Gerland says.
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