Fertility Transition in the Middle East and North Africa: What Coale’s Indices Tell Us?

Hani A. Guend, Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique - Urbanisation Culture et Société (INRS-UCS)

This study examines fertility of Muslim populations to contribute to fertility transition theory. Change in peoples’ worldviews is hypothesized as a trigger of processes behind driving fertility decline. Developmental Idealism and Islamic Reformism fuel this process. I present cluster analyzes of 26 countries of the Middle East and North Africa, using simple and composite fertility, socioeconomic, and policy indices. The aim is to uncover the internal structure of the data in support of pre-defined ideal types. I discuss the sample’s composition and the data, define patterns of fertility decline, and present the results of three multivariate cluster analysis models which link together the fertility indices and quantitative as well as qualitative explanatory variables. The results support classification of countries on the path of fertility transition along the line of DI. They uncover distinctive and common attributes of each cluster that have explanatory and predictive values with regard to fertility transition.