Determining the level of economic development of Iranian provinces and its relationship with fertility level with fuzzy Delphi hierarchical model (FDAHP)

Hamid Shayan ¹ ( Geography Department , Ferdowsi University of Mashhad )
Hamdollah Sajasi Qeydari ² ( Hormozgan Un.Associate Professor of Geography and Rural Planning Mashhad Ferdowsi University Faculty of Literature and Humanities Dr. Ali Shariati )
soodabeh ahmadi ³ ( PhD student Mashhad Ferdowsi University Faculty of Literature and Humanities Dr. Ali Shariati )

Submited date : 2022-01-25 Accepted date : 2022-10-03

Keywords: economic development, Fertility Rate, Provinces of Iran, Fuzzy Delphi Hierarchical Model,

Abstract :

Introduction: Economic development has been and will be one of the most important concerns in the world. On the other hand, the level of economic development affects various aspects of the life of the country's population, including the fertility rate. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of investigating the level of economic development of Iran's provinces and its relationship with the level of fertility.
Method: The method of the current research was descriptive-analytical and data collection was in the form of documents and with an elite-oriented approach. In the first step, in this research, 20 effective indicators at the level of economic development were identified using the opinions of 15 economics professors, and then in the second step, their importance or weight was calculated using the FDAHP model. In the third stage, by using the Vicor model, the ranking of the provinces in terms of the level of economic development of the provinces was done according to the official data of the Iranian Statistics Center based on the indicators. In the final step, after testing the normality of the data, the relationship between the two variables of economic development level and population fertility was calculated through Spearman's correlation coefficient in the SPSS software environment.
Conclusion: The research results indicate that Bushehr, Yazd and Tehran provinces are at the first level and Kermanshah and Lorestan are at the last level in terms of economic development. Correlation test has not confirmed a significant relationship between economic development and fertility rate at the provincial scale.
Findings: Although the difference in the fertility rate of the provinces cannot be explained by the level of their economic indicators, but without a doubt, economic bottlenecks have been effective in significantly reducing the fertility rate in all provinces. Therefore, the fertility of the population is not solely dependent on the variable of economic development. But it can be said that increasing the fertility level to more than the replacement level on a national scale is very unlikely, and it is predicted that incentives and advertisements will be effective only among limited sections of the society.