The Shoura Council will vote on Monday on a delicate subject, the reduction of the birth rate in the Kingdom. During the session, the council will hear the point of view of the committee that was tasked with researching the subject.

In its report, the committee supported encouraging breastfeeding among Saudi women, but expressed reservations about reducing the birth rate because it has already dropped in the past four decades. According to the committee’s report, the birth rate at the end of the 1970s was 7 infants per woman, a number that has dropped to 4.8 in 2000 and 3.3 in 2009.

The committee said that some of its objections to reduce birth rates stem from the growing number of foreign workers already present in the country to fill the shortage in domestic labor. According to the committees’ population forecast, this will lead to an imbalance in demography of the Kingdom in the near future. In addition, when Western countries reduced their birth rates, they suffered shortages in manpower, which opened the door for large numbers of immigrants, resulting in many social, religious, economic and political disturbances.

In the next 15 years, the committee argued, the birth rate is expected to drop to 0.98 child per couple, less than the global average. Statistics also point to the drop in the population growth and birth rate in the Kingdom by 6.01 percent.