RIYADH, July 6: The number of unmarried Saudi women could more than double to four million by 2007 because of the social problems spawned by the oil-rich kingdom’s economic development, a top Saudi sociologist has warned.

Abdullah al-Fuzan, a professor of sociology at Riyadh’s King Saud University, was quoted by the Okaz newspaper on Saturday as saying there were now 1.5 unmarried Saudi women because of “social disorders created by the economic boom.”

“Economic development in the past four decades has resulted in qualitative and quantitative changes on all aspects of Saudi life and social norms,” Fuzan said, without being more specific.

If the current rate continues there will be four million unmarried women in Saudi Arabia within five years, the sociologist warned, adding that 18,000 of 60,000 weddings in 2001 had already ended in divorce.—AFP