British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 705

CHAPTER XVI.
Table 8.

ESTIMATED TOTAL NUMBER OF CHILDREN PER MOSLEM WOMAN*.

According to the statistics of births during According to the statistics of births during According to the statistics of births during According to the statistics of births during According to the statistics of births during According to the statistics of births during

Table 9.

ESTIMATED TOTAL NUMBER OF Children IN COUNTRIES WITH HIGH RECORDED FERTILITY.

1927-29 1930-32 1933-35 1936-38 1939-41 1942--43

6.1 6.4 6.4 7.1 7.6 8.1

Country Year No. of children
-----
Japan 1925 5.1
1937 4.4
Chile 1930-32 4.7
Bulgaria 1921-22 5.6
1934-35 3.5
Egypt 1937 6.4 **
-Cairo 1940 5.8 ***
-Alexandria 1940 5.0 ***
170. General mortality. Table 10 shows the death rates for Moslems of Palestine during the period 1924-44, as compared to death rates for Egypt, the only neighbour Arab country for which such data are available}. It appears from the table that twenty years ago mortality in Moslem Palestine was at about the same level as in Egypt. Since then, no progress seems to have taken place in Egypt while in Moslem Palestine the mortality rate has decreased at an exceptionally rapid pace.
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* See: R. Bachi, Statistical data on the natality among the various sections of the population of Palestine (Jerusalem Hedessab M.0., 1945, stencilled bulletin). The estimates for 1938-43 are calculated on the basis of age specific rates; those for 1927-37 are obtained by indirect methods. The total number of children per woman corresponds to Kukeynki'a "total fertility" (one thousandth of the number of children born to 1,000 women passing through the child bearing age i.e., between the age of 15 and 50 - assuming that -

a) the fertility at each age is equal to the age specific fertility in the period considered and

b) none of the women in question dies during that period.

**Clyde V. Kiser. The demographic position of Egypt. "Demographic studies of selected areas of rapid growth". Milbank Memorial Fund, New York 1944. Rate obtained by an indirect method of calculation. Evidence of decreasing fertility rate in Egypt is given in that enquiry .

*** R. Bachi, in a Hebrew book on the Jewish population of Palestine edited by the Jewish Agency (Jerusalem 1944). Rate obtained by a direct method of calculation.

Data. arc given in the form of tri-ennial averages in order to eliminate the influence of waves in mortality due tc the epidemics of measles which appear in Palestine, in general, every three years.

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