Use of family planning is generally low in the region, but has increased in recent decades in some of the most populous countries - Egypt, Turkey and Iran. Demography, along with political and economic factors, has helped make the Middle East the site of massive labour and refugee movements. Improvements in women's education, population policies to slow fertility, and political developments will help determine the future demography of the Middle East, but the momentum created by past fertility and the current age structure suggests that the region will have close to 500 million inhabitants by 2025. The world's economic have become more integrated in recent decades, primarily because of improved communications technologies and relaxed barries to international trade and capital transfers. International labour migration accounts for little, if any, of the economic integration that has occurred since 1950.
Economic integration is believed to enhance the well-being of the countries involved.
Integration has been associated with sharp declines in income inequality among industrial countries since the 1960s. However, integration has proceeded slowly among the developing countries. Furthermore, the income gap between the developed and developing countries has increased. Such integration should promote increases in the world's income per capita.