Half a century of changes in the geography of fertility in Tunisia: divergences and convergences?

Zahia Ouadah-Bedidi, Université Paris-Diderot and Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Jacques Vallin, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Ibtihel Bouchoucha, Université de Montréal

From 1967 to 1999, Tunisian fertility fell from 7,1 children per women to 2,1, and then kept that replacement level for more than 10 years before rising slightly. On one side, female mean age at marriage, the huge increase of which (from 21 to 28 years) was a prominent factor of fertility decrease, stabilized at the end of the 1980s. Facts are well known at the national level but to what extent national means result from contrasted changes at the regional one remains quite unclear. Several available data sources allowed us to assess geographical diversity and to follow how the latter changed with time. After gathering them, making them coherent, and overpassing difficulties created by administrative boarder changes, it has been possible to identify periods of fertility divergence and convergence and to question the possible links between geographical variations of fertility with those of nuptiality.