On fertility

History is philosophy teaching by examples

Let’s look at this one example. The Uzbekistani fertility rate

All over the world, fertility is collapsing. Rich countries. Poor countries. Mid tier countries. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. Everyone is stopping to have children, everyone’s TFR is crashing into the ground.

Uzbekistan may be one of the only examples of the opposite pattern: when the fertility has actually increased, in the last few years. A quick search shows that of all the countries that have increased their TFR for the past decade (usually, the increase is microscopically small), Uzbekistan bounced back the most, and by far

Why?

You see, in many and many cases it may be difficult to explain the demographic patterns. The actual dynamics are complex, and include many factors. What is interesting about Uzbekistan, is that the reason for their demographic bounce back seems to be more or less straightforward.

In the year 2016, President Islam Karimov died