# _Completed fertility by region_

Fertility is characterized by important regional differences in Turkey. In particular, the city of Istanbul has been distinguishing itself for a long time by a quite low fertility profile, even at times of high overall fertility, apart from rebounds coinciding with periods of intense migration. Today, Western regions of Turkey have lower fertility rates than the Central Anatolian and Eastern regions of Turkey. In Western regions, fertility levels are at or under the replacement level since late 1980s and early 1990s. In Eastern regions, fertility rates are still high, while central Anatolian regions have an intermediary fertility profile, compared to Eastern and Western regions (Inan, 2007). These geographic differences reflect mostly socioeconomic differences. The West of Turkey is by far more developed than the East of Turkey (Yavuz, 2006). Another characteristic of fertility in Turkey is the intensity of its internal migrations. Permanent or temporary, most of the time individuals and/or families migrate from the East to the West, from rural to urban and from Eastern Anatolian regions to coastal regions. In most cases, migrations are motivated by economic reasons and related to education, job and income opportunities (Gökhan & Filiztekin, 2008).

The Turkish census data report the province of birth of the mother and reveal that completed fertility levels are significantly higher for women of the South-East region of Turkey ( provinces in the SouthEast are: Kars, Ardahan and Igdir, Agri, Van, Mus, Bingöl, Bitlis, Mardin, Hakkari, Siirt, Batman and Sirnak, Diyarbakir, Tunceli, Sanliurfa) in comparison to the North-West. The fertility decrease over generations can be observed for both regions, but there exists an important fertility gap between the two regions which is constant over all generations. For the 1960 cohort, the average number of children reported by the 2000 census is 3 for women in the North-West against 5.5 for women in the South East (while only 14% of Turkish women live in the South East region). For the cohorts 1969 to 1974, SILC reports also an important South-East/North-West gradient. Approximate completed fertility levels are the lowest in Marmara (1.6) and the highest in Southeast Anatolia (3,5).<sup>9</sup> So far we have identified important fertility differencials in Turkey according to education and regional background (which might also serve as a proxies for ethnicity). In order to see if education outweights region (or the other way round) we now cross region/ and education for our analysis of fertility differentials.

# _Crossing education and region_

Figure C in the appendix illustrates that according to the Turkish census data, women from the SouthEast and the North-West follow similar educational trends but throughout all cohorts, women from the North-West are more educated than women from the South-East for all levels of education. The increases in university education can be observed almost exclusively only for North-Western women, and more younger cohorts of women from the North-West pass from primary to secondary education in comparison to women from the South-East. According to official education statistics, education levels of girls remain lower compared to those of boys in Turkey in all regions, while the gender gap is highest for rural regions in the South-East (Hillman & Jenkner, 2004). However, more recently, the gender differences in school enrollment in Turkey have been significantly decreasing over the last decade and

> 9 Comparing our approximate completed fertility rates by region reported by SILC with those reported by the Turkish Demographic and Health Survey (2008, women aged 40 to 49) results in the same ranking of regions and suggests that SILC data underestimates fertility rates especially for the South‐East region where fertility is highest and mothers have their children relatively early.

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