An overview is provided of Middle Eastern countries on the following topics; population change, epidemiological transition theory and 4 patterns of transition in the middle East, transition in causes of death, infant mortality declines, war mortality, fertility, family planning, age and sex composition, ethnicity, educational status, urbanization, labor force, international labor migration, refugees, Jewish immigration, families, marriage patterns, and future growth. The Middle East is geographically defined as Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Gaza and the West Bank, Iran, Turkey, and Israel. The Middle East's population grew very little until 1990 when the population was 43 million. Population was about doubled in the mid-1950s at 80 million. Rapid growth occurred after 1950 with declines in mortality due to widespread disease control and sanitation efforts. Countries are grouped in the following ways: persistent high fertility and declining mortality with low to medium socioeconomic conditions (Jordan, Oman, Syria, Yemen, and the West Bank and Gaza), declining fertility and mortality in intermediate socioeconomic development (Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran), high fertility and declining mortality in high socioeconomic conditions (Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), and low fertility and mortality in average socioeconomic conditions (Israel). As birth and death rates decline, there is an accompanying shift from communicable diseases to degenerative diseases and increases in life expectancy; this pattern is reflected in the available data from Egypt, Kuwait, and Israel. High infant and child mortality tends to remain a problem throughout the Middle East, with the exception of Israel and the Gulf States. War casualties are undetermined, yet have not impeded the fastest growing population growth rate in the world. The average fertility is 5 births/woman by the age of 45. Muslim countries tend to have larger families. Contraceptive use is low in the region, with the exception of Turkey and Egypt and among urban and educated populations. More than 40% of the population is under 15 years of age. The region is about 50% Arabic (140 million). Educational status has increased, particularly for men; the lowest literacy rates for women are in Yemen and Egypt. The largest countries are Iran, Turkey, and Egypt.

Labor force interdependence creates a complex pattern among countries in the Middle East. Oil-rich countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) must import two-thirds of their labor force, including 80% of their professional and technical workers. These migrant workers come from Egypt (60%), Jordan, Yemen, Sudan, and South Asia, and the money they send home is a major factor in the economies of their native lands. Many Arabs who are considered foreign laborers have spent their entire lives, or have even been born, in the oil-rich countries; they have no hope of attaining citizenship. South Asians compete with Arabs for work in the Gulf States and tend to accept less-desirable jobs and lower wages. South Asian workers migrate from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. Middle Eastern women have social constraints on labor force participation, and most of the women working n the Gulf States are Asian; they often work as domestics. The women of the Middle East are an untapped resource for this labor market.

Macroanalytic studies of the relationship of fertility and development have been applied in the past based mostly on cross‐sectional aggregate data from various countries. Because these countries belong to different models of the epidemiologic transition, variation in the dynamic relationship among these models should be allowed for. In this paper, various techniques (including linear and quadratic regression, a minimum‐maximum method of plotting the relationship, a special approach of stepwise regression) were applied to a data set from 85 countries. The crude birth rate was used as the dependent variable with several demographic, economic, social health, and family planning indicators as independent variables, measures over the period 1950–75. The results confirm the existence of submodels of countries with varying relationships between fertility and its correlates. The results disallow direct transferability of the experience of one group of countries (such as Europe) to another group belonging to another model (such as the less developed countries). The study also found the strength of the family planning effort to be a significant factor and one to be singled out as a major contributor in the fertility decline between 1965–75 in the developing countries. Its effect, however, stands to be enhanced in various degrees by concurrent social and economic development.

The theory of epidemiologic transition is an application of epidemiologic inference and interpretation to population dynamics. The theory focuses on the complex changes in the patterns of health and disease and their demographic socioeconomic and ecobiologic determinants and consequences in the various population groups. In so doing the theory identifies mortality as a fundamental force in population change particularly in the early and formative phases of the transition with fertility as a crucial co-variable becoming the eventual pacemaker of population change later on in the transition when mortality is on its way to virtual stabilization at low levels. Druing the transition a long-term shift and eventual decline occurs in mortality and disease patterns whereby pandemics of infection are progressively (but not entirely) displaced by degenerative and man-made diseases as the leading causes of death. Changes during epidemiologic transition have a great impact on population composition and the pattern of population growth. Distinctive variations in the pattern pace determinants and the consequences of population change differentiate 4 basic models of epidemiologic transition. Whereas the more developed countries belonging to the classical and accelerated models experienced only low to moderate rates of population growth during the transition the less developed countries in the delayed model are experiencing growth rates of 2.0-3.5%/year. At this rate the population of those countries will double in 20 to 30 years. In those countries who are in the transitional varient of the delayed model this growth has been slowed by the initial fertility decline. Fortunately China with upwards of 1 billion people is apparently a part of the transitional varient. Despite the promising indications of the onset of fertility decline in a growing number of less developed countries the large gap that has developed between fertility and mortality in countries that have recently experienced the 2nd stage of epidemiologic transition (the age of receding pandemics) indicates that the unprecedented growth of world population will continue for some time to come. Charts illustrating changes in birth and death patterns spanning the last 2 centuries are given for New York City Mauritius the US as a whole Denmark Japan and Mexico. Included are trends in major casues of death and data by race for selected countries.

The general theory of epidemiologic transition is explained. The theory hypothesizes that long-term changes in health and disease patterns in any society are related to the demographic and social conditions in that country. Mortality is considered to be the major factor in population change. The theory is illustrated by a detailed consideration of birth and death trends in the U.S. Mortality decline began in the U.S. in the middle of the nineteenth century. Associated with this decline was a gradual shift from death due to infectious disease to mortality caused by degenerative, man-made, and stress-related diseases. The transition favored women, children, and whites. Medical progress was less responsible for the change than were improvement in living conditions and changes in the nature of certain diseases. The magnitude of this decline in mortality is illustrated by an analysis of 5 specific indicators of mortality. Changes in the U.S. fertility patterns were also unplanned and attributable to socioeconomic factors rather than to medical advances. Comparison of the transition in the U.S. with the same movement in England shows that the U.S. experience fits the Western or Clasical Model of the epidemiologic transition theory. This experience cannot be used as a model for the transition occurring now in the Third World. In those countries, programs organized in the context of general social development projects could be expected to influence trends in mortality and fertility.

Although the Arab world has as a whole enough resources to take care of its population it also has a need to solve its population-based problems. Some of these problems are: 1) overpopulation especially in Egypt Sudan Morocco Tunisia Jordan Syria Lebanon and the 2 Yemens; these countries are inhabited by 70% of the whole Arab world and have an average annual growth rate of 3%; 2) health risks for mothers with too numerous and closely spaced pregnancies and for the children who often suffer from malnutrition mental retardation and poor growth due to poor birth planning; 3) age structure because children under 15 constitute 45-50% of the total population of the Arab world; 4) uneven population distribution with too rapid urbanization on one side and nomadic and scattered communities on the other; migration policies to control the rapid unplanned urban growth are needed; 5) small size of manpower resources due to the high proportion of dependent children and inadequate training of the labor force; most countries lack native physicians nurses and educators.