Determining the level of economic development of Iranian provinces and its relationship with fertility level with fuzzy Delphi hierarchical model (FDAHP)
Subject Areas : Regional PlanningHamid Shayan 1 * , Hamdollah Sajasi Qeydari 2 , soodabeh ahmadi 3
1 - Professor, Department of Geography, faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
2 - Associate Professor, Department of Geography, faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
3 - PhD studentMashhad Ferdowsi UniversityFaculty of Literature and Humanities Dr. Ali Shariati
Keywords: economic development, Fertility Rate, Provinces of Iran, Fuzzy Delphi Hierarchical Model,
Abstract :
Economic development has always been, and will continue to be, one of the world’s most important concerns, and its level affects various aspects of life, including the fertility rate of a country’s population. Accordingly, the present study was conducted to examine the level of economic development across Iran’s provinces and its relationship with fertility levels. This research was designed using a descriptive-analytical method, based on documentary data collection and expert opinions. First, twenty key indicators influencing economic development were identified through consultation with fifteen economics professors, and their weights were determined using the FDAHP model. Next, the VIKOR model was employed to rank the provinces in terms of their level of economic development based on official data from the Statistical Center of Iran. In the final stage, after testing the normality of the data, the relationship between economic development and fertility rate was analyzed using Spearman’s correlation coefficient in SPSS software. The results showed that Bushehr, Yazd, and Tehran have the highest levels of economic development, while Kermanshah and Lorestan have the lowest. Although no significant relationship was found between economic development and fertility at the provincial level, economic constraints have clearly played an important role in the overall decline in fertility rates. Therefore, fertility is not solely dependent on economic development, and increasing it above the replacement level at the national scale appears highly unlikely, as incentives and promotional policies in this area are likely to be effective only among a limited segment of society
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Fertility phenomenon is one of the most important natural events of the population and one of the important elements of population growth, and to increase it, some countries apply incentive policies and others apply punitive policies. In this regard, fertility, as one of the main components of population growth, is a subject that has always been given attention, and extensive and wide-ranging research has been conducted in the field of knowing the factors affecting it and its relationship with other economic variables in Iran and outside Iran. In this sense, the relationship between the fertility rate and other development variables in each society is not only necessary in population forecasts, which are the basis and infrastructure of economic, social and demographic planning for development, but also In the evaluation of the economic and social conditions of the studied society, it is considered one of the macro and important indicators. In fact, new statistics show that the fertility rate has an inextricable link with economic development. Based on this, the issue of the relationship between fertility rate and economic development has always been the focus of researchers, especially in developing countries. Therefore, the purpose of this study is the level of economic development and its relationship with fertility rate as an important and effective demographic factor on population growth in the scale of Iranian provinces. Therefore, this study seeks to answer this key question: Is there a relationship between the variable of economic development and the fertility rate of the population in the provinces of the country?
Methodology
According to the purpose, the method of this research is descriptive-analytical based on the country's official data. In the descriptive part, the tool for collecting information is documentary and library sources, especially the data of Iran Statistics Center in 2014 and 2015. The geographical scale of the current research is all 31 provinces of Iran, and the necessary information related to 20 selected indicators has been extracted from the website of Iran Statistics Center. In the next step, indicators were designed and provided to the professors of the economics department to assign weight to them based on their opinions. Then the weight of each index was calculated using the FDAHP model based on Excel program and the provinces were stratified according to the level of economic development using the Vicor model. In order to investigate the relationship between the level of economic development and fertility, Spearman's correlation test was used according to the SPSS software program. Finally, GIS software has been used to draw the shapes.
Results and Discussion
In this section, 15 experts have assigned a score between 1 and 9 to each index, where the numbers 1 and 9 respectively mean the lowest and highest degree of importance of the index in determining the level of economic development according to Iran's conditions. The most important indicator of the unemployment rate in the population of 20 to 29 years old was obtained with a final weight of 0.645 and the least important indicator was the average level of household rainfall (with a final weight of 0.187). According to the decision matrix, the values of the 20 indicators of the provinces were ranked along with their final weight in the Vicor model, based on the value of Q in terms of development indicators, Bushehr, Yazd and Tehran provinces with the lowest value are at the high level. Bushehr and Yazd, especially due to the high percentage of workers in the industry, the added value of the industry sector, and the gross production per capita, which had a very high weight according to experts, have been ranked higher, and the condition of two models is established for them. Also, Bushehr province has the highest rate of economic participation with 76.03%. The negative correlation coefficient of 0.035 shows that there is no significant relationship between economic development and fertility. This result is in line with the research results that failed to find a relationship between fertility and the level of economic development based on regional data.
Conclusion
In the last few decades, Iranian society has experienced significant demographic changes, so that the population structure is indicative of these changes. For the first time, the present research has examined the relationship between the fertility rate and the level of economic development of the provinces based on the data of 2014 and 2015. Although on the scale of the countries of the world it is possible to observe an inverse relationship between the two mentioned variables, but on the scale of 31 provinces of Iran, such a relationship was not obtained except in a few provinces. Therefore, it should be noted that population policies are not limited to population growth, but different aspects of the population, including the quality of the population, should be included. It should also be emphasized that an economic theory cannot explain all changes in fertility. It is necessary to consider socio-economic processes resulting from economic development, and family planning policies that affect people's motivations should be formulated. Therefore, it is suggested to pay attention to the multilateralism approach in the analysis in the study of the fertility rate of the population at the geographical level of the country. Fertility rate growth cannot be achieved only through economic transformation and development, but it has various cultural and social roots and many other influencing factors that need to be taken into consideration in the future study.
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