The Maghreb demographic transition: Tunisia case study

Abstract

Tunisia, with its tradition of periodic general census of the population since 1921, has a database to describe and analyze the evolution of the population not only from a quantitative point of view, but also its structure (especially according to age) over time.This work aims to verify the process of the demographic transition and describe the aging of our population. The different demographic indicators were collected from INS data, local press and international sources.From a broad-based age pyramid and fine point in 1956 we are today with a pyramid with a notch in the under 25 years. The proportion of people aged 60 and over increased from 5.5% of the total population in 1966 to 11.4% in 2014. They also confirm the rapid demographic transition in Tunisia. In half a century, birth and death rates dropped from 23.27 ‰ to 5.48 ‰ (r = -0.86, p <10-3) and from 45.47 ‰ to 18.87 ‰ in 2014 (r = -0.97, p <10-3) respectively between the years 1960 and 2014 (r = -0.94, p <10-3). At the same time, the total fertility rate fell from 7.01 in 1964 to 1.99 in 2005, to reach 2.4 in 2014.All of these indicators put Tunisia in the rank of aging average the "grandpa boom" is not for tomorrow