National and Provincial Level Fertility Trends in Syria, 1979-2006

The analysis of the fertility transition in Syria allows us to distinguish several phases. The first phase was when fertility reached world records, and resisted any change. Followed by the phase of rapid decline in the mid 1980s, and lastly by a phase of slow decrease or a phase of quasi-stagnation in fertility. Despite the interest to represent more accurate estimates of recent Syrian fertility levels and trends, very few studies have been devoted to this question. This paper addresses this issue by trying to review and analyze trends in fertility over the last three decades. Fertility rates are estimated by the own-children method using data from the SMCHS 1993 and the SFHS 2001 surveys as well as the multiple indicator cluster survey MICS3 conducted in 2006. The own-children estimates show that fertility has declined from almost 7.5 in the first half of the 1980s to about 6.3 in the second half, before declining to about 5.31 in the early 1990s and to about 3.12 in the mid-2000s. Despite this significant decline, the Syrian fertility transition is in a phase of stall or temporary blockage above 3 children per woman. Our arguments suggest continued stall of fertility decline at least in the visible future.