ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the basic description of fertility changes in Israel, noting their complexity and diverse pattern, answering the question: What have been the major changes in fertility and family size in Israel? The study of the transition to smaller family size is therefore of importance for its demographic relevance, for what it implies about individual gender and family roles, and for the structure and composition of communities over time. The fertility transition was slower and later than mortality changes among the Moslem population in Israel and later than among Christian-Arab Israelis. Both the level of fertility and the pace of its reduction differentiate Christian from Moslem Israelis; both populations are different in pace and pattern from the Jewish ethnic patterns, although convergence toward small family size has become ubiquitous. Changes in the decade beginning in the 1970s put pressures on this connection and, combined with socioeconomic increases, led to the beginning of the transition to small family size.
