The Diffusion of new fertility behaviours in Algeria: geographical changes observed between 1987, 1998 and 2008 censuses

Within three decades Algerian fertility dramatically fell, from 8 children per woman in the early 1970s to 2.2 in the late 1990s, before climbing up after 2000. As usual, the decline started in cities. But it could not have been so rapid at the national level without diffusing in rural world quickly. We check here such assumption by analysing data available at regional and local levels. Local data are rare and hardly accessible, except those from the 1998 census now published at the “commune” level. A special treatment of 1987 census data for the central part of the country allowed us to analyse changes occurred in the last period of sharp decline at the commune level. It is also very interesting to look at the geographical changes in age at marriage, the rise of which was the first mean of fertility reduction, and to discuss the relation between the two behaviour changes.