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Since the 1990s, Turkey’s fertility rate has steadily declined, due to, among other factors, rising household incomes, expanded access to higher education for women and increased birth control practices.
“The use of birth-control methods has increased in Turkey a lot, but that is not the only reason for the decline in population,” an obstetrician named Ka?an Kocatepe told Hürriyet Daily News, a Turkish newspaper.
“Many women want to have a successful career. That’s why the maternity age has increased, as women have started giving birth to their first child in their 30s.”
Indeed, Dr. ?smet Koç, a demographer at Hacettepe University in Ankara, warned that Turkey's fertility rate is now below 2.1, the replacement level, which suggests the population will eventually decline.
The fertility level in more prosperous western Turkey is now about 1.5 -- roughly the same as in western Europe.
The number of children produced by the average Turkish woman has plunged to two from three over just the past two decades, coincident with Turkey's rise as an economic power.
But there is a wrinkle to this whole phenomenon.
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