Tunisia WFS [World Fertility Survey]

Tunisia, the smallest North African country in size, has recently published the results of its part of the World Fertility Survey (WFS) taken in 1978. About 1/2 of this Missouri-sized country consists of arid and semiarid desert, with well-irrigated fertile areas in the north. The country, which has a population of about 7 million, must import large quantities of food each year and also suffers from widespread unemployment. In 1964, the government was among the earliest to announce a policy to reduce the rate of population growth and Tunisia now has 1 of the lowest birth rates of the African continent (33 births/1000 population) although it is still moderately high. Part of the reason for the birth rate decline has been a risking age at marriage; the legal minimum was fixed at 17 years for women and 20 for men by a 1964 law. The Tunisia WFS indicates that, of women 20-24 in 1978, 56% had not yet married, a large increase from the 27% of 1966. The mean age at 1st marriage for females was 24 in 1978, very high by less developed country standards. It may be that the fertility-lowering impetus from rising age at marriage has been spent (this measure cannot rise indefinitely): Tunisia's total fertility rate (TFR), the average number of children/woman, dropped from 7.1 children in 1966 to 5.7 in 1976, but the decrease has tapered off somewhat since. The TFR appears to have dropped to 5.2 as of 1981. When asked how many children they would like to have, the women surveyed gave 4.2 children, on average, as their "ideal" number. This number is, of course, considerably above that needed to ultimately stop population growth (about 2.1-2.5 children/woman). Contraceptive use in Tunisia is quite high by developing country standards; much of this is due to the efficient network of government-sponsored clinics. About 44% of the women exposed to pregnancy were practicing an efficient form of family planning with the pill or sterilization accounting for most of that number (22 and 20% respectively). Nonetheless, traditions which still favor 3-5 children and some possible loss of momentum from a rising age at marriage may cause future fertility declines to be slower than in the recent past. Tunisia does present an interesting case of a country maintaining a government program to reduce population growth as an overall part of the country's development efforts.