Marriage and Population Growth Anthropological Comparative Study in Kirkuk City

Abstract

           The city of Kirkuk is one of the disputed cities between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad. In the Iraqi Constitution 2005, through Article 140, the constitutional solution to this problem was decided, through (normalization, the census of the city’s population, the referendum). This process is depending on the number of population .

The simple marriage habits of Arabs and the difficulty of Kurdish marriage led to rapid population growth among Arabs..

Population growth is influenced by a wide array of social and cultural variables including social customs, marriage levels, birth rate, and family size and so on.

The Kurdish rural community has been dismantled since the 1980s, while the Arab rural society is in a state of continuous growth. Moreover, the Kurdish population is concentrated inside the city and practices urban or marginal occupations, while the Arab population has become widely distributed in villages, districts and within the city, practicing pastoral, agricultural, governmental, security and military occupations. The Arab rural community is also characterized by high demographic growth due to early marriage, lack of family planning and polygamy, while the Kurdish urban population is characterized by a low population due to delayed marriages, birth control and civil marriage. Furthermore, the average size of Kurdish family is between (3 to 5 persons), while the average size of Arab family, especially in rural areas, ranges between 8 and 10. The process of marriage in Arab society is easy and does not cost much while this process tends to be more costly in Kurdish community. It is worth mentioning that the migration of Kurdish youth outwards or the migration of Kurdish families to Kurdistan Region is high, while migration for many Arab families and their young members tend to be towards Kirkuk city. The percentage of spinsterhood in Kurdish society is higher compare to Arab community. Therefore, we expect that the percentage of Kurds in Kirkuk will fall to (38%) in 2030, after it was 48% in the 1957. And the percentage of Arabs in Kirkuk will arise  to (35%) in 2030, after it was 21% in the 1957.