Determinants of Fertility Change in the West Bank and Gaza Strip

Much has been said the ‘’exceptionally’’ high Palestinian fertility. Even though the fertility transition is well under way it is clear that the classical theory of demographic transition cannot explain the continued strong demand for children in the modern yet conflicting context of Gaza or the differences with the West Bank. Several hypotheses have indeed been brought up to explain the factors surrounding the ever-high Palestinian fertility. This paper thus aims to better understand the mechanisms of fertility change in both regions by estimating trends in annual marital conception probabilities with a discrete-time logistic regression model. We argue that the economic downturn has a bigger impact on the conception probabilities than the state of belligerence and the increase in the age at marriage does not affect overall fertility because birth intervals decrease among older age groups.