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Our goals in this paper are two-fold: (1) to extend available estimates of cohort fertility for Muslim women in Israel to cohorts born prior to the foundation of the State in 1948, in order to get a better long-term view of cohort fertility change; and (2) to examine the changing relationship between various measures of cohort fertility (childlessness, parity progression, completed fertility) to the educational attainment of Muslim women, which has increased dramatically over the last several decades of birth cohorts. To these ends, we make use of Israeli Census data from 1995 and 2008. We take a cohort approach because period fertility measures are subject to distortions due to the changing timing of fertility, and period indicators of Muslim fertility differ quite dramatically from cohort measures. Our preliminary findings indicate that Cohort Completed Fertility declined from 7.3 for the cohort born in 1940-44 to 4.2 for the cohort born in 1965-69. Importantly, declines in CF seem to be slowing for cohorts born in the 1960s. The advantage of the Census data is that sample sizes are large, which is critical for an examination of educational gradients in fertility patterns.

fertility; Israel; Muslims; cohort; education; convergence; fertility transition