Morocco’s Quiet Crisis: A Historic Fertility Drop With No Rebound in Sight

Marrakech – A study published this month by France’s Institut national d’études démographiques (INED) places Morocco at the center of a demographic shift unfolding across the Maghreb.

Authored by Zahia Ouadah-Bedidi, Ibtihel Bouchoucha, and Soumaya Abdellatif, the report tracks how Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia moved from some of the fastest fertility transitions ever recorded toward a low fertility that, the authors note, “appears durably settled.”

The starting point was high. The synthetic fertility index across the three countries fell from close to seven or eight children per woman in the 1970s to half that by the early 1990s. What followed, the authors observe, broke with expectations of a single, uniform regional path.

Morocco’s trajectory stands apart from its neighbors. Where Algeria registered a marked rebound to more than three children per woman in the mid-2010s, and Tunisia saw a smaller, later bump, Morocco recorded what the report calls “a continuous and gradual decline, without any rebound.”

That path brought the country to a historically low index of 1.97 children per woman in 2024, the year Morocco crossed below the replacement threshold of 2.1. The report groups Morocco, alongside Tunisia, among states now heading toward very low fertility.

The decline reshaped births without reshaping their timing. The peak of fertility stayed concentrated among women aged 25 to 29 across all three years the authors examined. The fall came instead through a reduction in births first among mothers aged 30 to 34, then among those aged 25 to 29, producing a drop at every age over two decades. The mean age at maternity barely moved, holding between 30.3 and 30.6 years.

Marriage offers little of the explanation. In Morocco, the authors find, fertility fell even as women married relatively early. Census data show the mean age of women at first marriage moving backward, from 26.3 years in 2004 to 24.6 years in 2024, while the figure for men advanced over the same period, from 31.2 to 32.4 years.

The growing role of contraception

That earlier female marriage did not slow the decline, a pattern the report reads as pointing to “the central role of other factors, contraception foremost among them.”

Contraception is where Morocco diverges most sharply. Until the early 2000s, the three countries followed broadly similar paths. Then Algeria and Tunisia slid back to between 50% and 55% in the 2010s, while Morocco moved in the opposite direction. The share of married women using a contraceptive method climbed from 40% in the 1990s to 70% by 2020.

The report’s reading note records that by 2018, contraceptive use in Morocco reached 70% across all methods, of which 58% came through modern methods such as the pill, the IUD, injectables, implants, and sterilization, in place of traditional practices like periodic abstinence.

That progression was, the authors observe, particularly sustained. Mastering fertility within a setting of relatively early female marriage, Morocco recalls the experiences of Iran and Egypt, where rapid and widespread adoption of contraception drove births down quickly.

Behind these numbers sits a difficult labor market for women. Across the three countries, the report traces a feminization of education and higher learning that has not translated into stronger employment.

The difficult family-work balance for women

In Morocco, the female activity rate climbs steeply into the late twenties, then declines after 30 – precisely when the parental burden is heaviest – and remains low afterward, at 24% for women aged 35 to 44. Difficulties entering the labor market, and then reconciling work and family, can delay plans for marriage and motherhood and contribute to postponed births.

Shifting family norms add another layer. Parenthood, the authors write, tends to become “a more demanding project,” with greater emotional and economic investment concentrated on fewer children, spread through schooling, media, social networks, and international mobility.

The consequences are visible in the country’s age structure. The report describes population pyramids whose broad base in the 1960s reflected very high fertility, took a “rectangular” profile by the late 1990s, and have narrowed at the bottom in recent years as births fell. Moroccans aged 60 and over made up 13.8% of the population in 2024, a figure the report expects to accelerate as fertility keeps falling.

The longer-term arithmetic points one way. As smaller generations reach reproductive age, annual births will decline mechanically. Should the natural balance turn negative, the authors caution, growth would depend on a positive migratory balance – a difficult prospect in a region historically marked by net emigration.

The decline, the report concludes, is “clear and at times very rapid,” and no fresh rebound is, at this stage, perceptible.

Read also: From Seven Children to Two: How Morocco Became a Nation That Stopped Reproducing