An Explanation of Concurrency between Fertility and Cultural Changes

Although, Fertility or the process of child bearing is a main and principal pillar of demography, but simultaneously, as a social phenomenon, it has a close relation to the culture and especially to the socio-economic feature as well as to macro policies of countries. Therefore, socio-economic and cultural policies and plans have considerable effect on fertility and reciprocally are affected by it. In other word, fertility, being a main factor of population change, also carries an important cultural element. Meanwhile, citizens of any country after moving to other countries still preserve their own culture, traditions and behaviors for many years and in some cases for whole their lives. However, available data indicates that fertility level is an exception and gradually tends to that of host country.  In this study, to examine this hypothesis, an Iranian national fertility trend was compared with that of Afghan immigrants. Results of this comparison showed that: the level of fertility among Afghan immigrants has a remarkable tendency to that of Iranian national level, while gradually deferring from their own national level. Therefore, a concurrency between fertility and cultural changes was approved. This finding was then explained using “ Nudge” theory and resulted in an outcome justified by theories of fertility explanation.