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Cyprus Birth Rates
At the end of the 1980s, the Republic of Cyprus had a
fertility
rate (births per woman) of 2.4, the highest in Western
Europe. But
this spurt in births was a new development, and it was
uncertain
how long it would continue. In the troubled 1970s, the
reverse had
been the case. Substantial migration and a decline in the
fertility
rate resulted in a negative growth rate of -0.9 percent in
the
years 1973-76
(see
fig. 5). In the period 1976-82, while
the
economy was being restructured, population growth
gradually reached
an average rate of 0.8 percent, and in 1984 peaked at 1.4
percent.
In the second half of the 1980s, the growth rate remained
above 1
percent.
The long-term decline in the fertility rate was first
noted
after World War II, when the crude birth rate dropped from
32 per
thousand in 1946 to an average of 25 per thousand during
the 1950s.
The main contributing factor in this remarkable fall in
fertility
was the rapid postwar economic development. This downward
trend
continued in the following decades, and a rate of 18 per
thousand
was recorded in the first part of the 1970s. After a
further
decline to 16 per thousand in the years after the 1974
invasion,
the Greek Cypriot birth rate increased to a rate of 20 to
21 per
thousand during the period 1980-86, and then continued its
decline,
reaching 19.2 per thousand in 1985-88.
This change in the reproductive behavior of the Greek
Cypriot
population was generally attributed to improvement of the
standard
of living, expansion of education to all sections of the
population, and the consequent wider participation by
women in the
work force. In addition, there was the traditional Cypriot
concern
to provide a better future for offspring, which, in a
modern social
context, entailed increased expenditure for education and
a
striving to amass a larger material inheritance. As a
result, the
average family size has declined, from 3.97 persons in
1946 to 3.51
in 1982.
A final cause of declining birth rates is the
disappearance in
Cyprus of the rural-urban dichotomy, in which higher birth
rates
are registered in the countryside. The postwar period saw
an
increasing movement of people to the towns, on either a
daily or a
permanent basis. This fact, together with the compactness
of the
island, has resulted in "the near fusion of urban and
rural life,"
in the words of L. W. St. John Jones, a student of Cypriot
demography. The rapid and effective dissemination of
typical urban
attitudes contributed to a rural fertility rate not much
higher
than the urban one. Contraceptives were easily available
at modest
cost all over the island; abortions, widely carried out in
private
clinics, were seen not as matters of moral or religious
controversy, but simply as another means of family
planning, albeit
a drastic one.
Data as of January 1991
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