The Arab world's demographic transition

In the post below I stumbled upon a weird datum. Kuwait's total fertility is now below 3. The average estimates seem to be ~2.5 or so. This surprised me, as my impression was that Gulf Arab petroleum based states tended to encourage pro-natalism. This was both a matter of ideology, and also because the small and wealthy native populations lived off rents, and had not had to modify their neo-medieval ideologies to foster productivity driven economic growth. But perhaps Kuwait is an anomaly? Well, it turns out that the Saudi fertility rate is now below 3 as well. Again, depending on which numbers you trust a value of ~2.5 seems plausible. In 1980, at the peak of OPEC's power and a period when Saudi Arabia was flush with incredible per capita wealth the fertility rate was north of 7.0. But even in the mid-1990s Saudi Arabia's fertility remained a robust ...