Abstract
At the end of the 20th century, Bedouin fertility reached over 10 children per woman, one of the highest levels ever recorded in human history. In the first decade of the present century, fertility declined by almost 50% and has since stabilized. In this article we examine this Reproductive Revolution and consider how fertility decline is related to other social changes: the rise in living standards, education and paid work, especially for women; the move to urban dwelling, beside the continuation of life in the unrecognized villages, and the infiltration of new aspirations and life styles, but also the reality of living on the margins of Israeli society and the ongoing confrontations with the institutions of the Jewish State. In 1948, Bedouin society lost almost 90% of its population and those who remained were transferred to the arid lands of the Eastern Negev. The result was the total destruction of the Bedouin economy, which had developed during the Mandate period, and of the network of family relations. The rebuilding took place under circumstances of irregular and insufficient income, dependence on the State coupled with continuing confrontations and competition between the tribes and the families. Under these conditions, women and their fertility became a central resource in the struggle for survival. In the present century, change accelerated: a growing number of people moved to the urban settlements and a growing number of men and women took up higher education and began to work in the fields of education, welfare, medicine and law. The birth-rate suddenly dropped dramatically but this drop halted after a decade. Our aim is to identify who led the drop in fertility and what stopped its continuation? The analysis is based on data from the survey conducted by the Galilee Society in 2007, a socio-economic survey of the Arab population in Israel, from which we focused on 491 married women aged 18 to 52 from the towns and unrecognized villages located in the Negev. Controlling for age, the main effects were post-secondary education, confrontations with the State (negative) and standards of living (positive). These effects changed over the generations and brought about a change in the age at marriage and at first birth, which are the proximate, but not the only, determinants of the number of children born. The dramatic decline in the birth rates in Bedouin society in the Negev in the past two decades is part of a comprehensive process of change, a Reproductive Revolution, which includes changes in the way of life, in patriarchal relations in the family, in values and in traditional patterns of behavior. The steep decline, followed by stabilisation at a level of fertility which is high relative to that of the rest of Israeli society, reflects these changes but also their complexity.
Translated title of the contribution | Fertility decline in Negev Bedouin society in the 21st century |
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Original language | Hebrew |
Pages (from-to) | 25-59 |
Number of pages | 35 |
Journal | ביטחון סוציאלי |
Volume | 114 |
State | Published - Sep 2021 |