We do not read demography as a mere neutral accumulation of numbers, but as a silent social archive that records, without commentary or justification, the outcomes of public policies and long-term economic choices. From this perspective, the results of the 2024 general population and housing census in Tunisia reveal a profound transformation in the country’s demographic structure. This transformation is inseparable from the economic trajectory Tunisia has experienced since the late 1980s, with its gradual adoption of a neoliberal model that reshaped the relationship between the state, society, the market, and demographic time itself.
As of November 6, 2024, Tunisia’s population stood at approximately 11.97 million inhabitants, reflecting continued demographic growth but at a clearly slowed pace. The annual growth rate fell to 0.87% between 2014 and 2024, after having exceeded 2% during earlier periods in the history of the nation-state. This slowdown is not only the “natural” result of demographic transition; it is also a complex social indicator reflecting changes in reproductive behavior, transformations in the role of the family, and the erosion of the economic horizon for younger generations in a context marked by uncertainty, rising living costs, and weak social protection.
The age structure reveals one of the most significant shifts: the acceleration of population aging. The proportion of people over 60 has increased markedly, with the aging index reaching 73.9% in 2024, compared with only 12% in 1966. The average age has risen to 35.5 years, and the median age to 32.1 years, confirming Tunisia’s entry into an advanced demographic phase characterized by the narrowing of the base of the age pyramid and the widening of its apex. In contrast, the proportion of children aged 0 to 4 has fallen to around 5.9% of the total population, a decline that reflects both the past success of family planning policies and the transformation of reproduction into an economically risky decision in a context of job insecurity and rising housing and service costs.
This is where the demographic and economic intersect directly. Since the adoption of structural adjustment programs and the deepening of neoliberal choices based on reducing the state’s social role, market liberalization, and the dismantling of subsidy systems, the material conditions for social reproduction have changed. The Tunisian family is no longer a relatively protected space; it has become a unit that adapts to market logic, recalculating reproductive choices according to unstable incomes, prolonged unemployment, and weak social coverage. This is also reflected in the demographic dependency ratio for the elderly, which reaches 28% nationally: the base of active workers now bears an increasing burden in an economic context unable to create sufficient value and jobs.
These transformations deepen when observing regional inequalities. The census shows the persistent strong demographic concentration in the second region (Greater Tunis and the northeastern coast), which accounts for about 33% of the population, compared with the weak demographic appeal of the interior and southern regions. This distribution is not merely a geographic fact; it is the product of a long history of unbalanced development policies that reinforced the center-periphery logic and encouraged internal and external migration as a demographic adaptation mechanism to poverty and marginalization. Some interior governorates record low or even negative growth, reflecting a continuous human outflow, especially among the young and working-age population.
At the heart of this data lies a central question: is Tunisia experiencing a “natural” demographic transition, or is it facing demographic exhaustion resulting from an economic model incapable of reproducing society? In other words, are aging and declining fertility signs of social maturity, or consequences of economic stagnation that push people to delay births, emigrate, and withdraw?
The answer cannot be purely technical or neutral. The census also reveals transformations in household structures: the average household size fell to 3.45 persons in 2024, after exceeding 5 persons in the 1970s. This evolution reflects the fragmentation of the extended family model and the rise of the small nuclear family—a process often accompanied by flexible labor policies, a decline in social housing, and the transfer of social responsibilities formerly shared by the state to individuals.
Moreover, the low proportion of foreign population (0.55%), despite Tunisia’s geographic position, raises questions about economic attractiveness. A country that sees its skilled workforce emigrate and its population age does not attract a stable labor force capable of offsetting this deficit, exacerbating demographic imbalance in the medium term.
Reading the 2024 census results leads to an essential conclusion: Tunisia’s demography no longer follows its own natural rhythm but has become hostage to economic choices that have reshaped the social time of its inhabitants. Neoliberalism does not merely alter growth indicators and financial balances; it profoundly reformulates decisions on reproduction, migration, and communal life, thus shaping the very future of society. The numbers are no longer neutral—they become a silent indictment of a development trajectory that failed to turn demographic transition into an opportunity and instead transformed it into a social burden fraught with uncertainty.
From demographic transition to social contraction: slower growth, declining fertility, and the changing meaning of reproduction
The slowdown in demographic growth in Tunisia can no longer be explained solely by the classic logic of “demographic transition,” based on health improvements, higher education levels, and changing family values. The 2024 census paints a more ambiguous picture, where demographic decline intersects with social and economic stagnation, making this slowdown more the result of eroding living conditions than the product of completed modernity. When the annual growth rate falls to 0.87%, the question is no longer “how many are we?” but “under what conditions is society reproducing itself?”
The age structure shows a marked decline in younger cohorts and a rapid expansion of older cohorts, without an economic dynamic capable of valuing the workforce or a social state able to absorb the cost of aging. Tunisia is aging before it becomes wealthier; an aging process that elsewhere signals success becomes here a burden.
This is evident in the question of fertility: having children becomes a costly decision in an unstable context. Expensive housing, deteriorating public services, and declining social protection redefine reproduction as an individual risk. Neoliberal policies do not prohibit childbearing but condition it on families’ ability to bear burdens alone that the state no longer shares.
This contradiction is intensified for women, faced with unstable professional integration and little reproductive support. Delaying births becomes more a survival strategy than an emancipatory choice.
Regionally, the slowdown mirrors the very maps of inequality: interior regions lose their young to the coast and the capital. This migration is a survival strategy in a concentrated economy, which empties marginalized territories of their capacity for renewal.
The concept of “social contraction” takes on full meaning here: it is not just fewer births, but a shrinking social horizon, a crumbling trust in the future.
Thus, Tunisia’s demography is not a linear march toward modernity but a fragmented path, caught between transition and stagnation. The country has mastered growth without building an economy capable of turning this control into development.
Geography of demographic inequalities: concentration, internal migration, and reproduction of center and periphery
The 2024 census results show that human geography has become the condensed expression of a long process of economic and political choices that reproduced regional inequalities. Concentration in some regions and silent depletion in others is not a natural dynamic, but the product of a model that concentrated investments, services, and jobs.
The second region accounts for 33% of the population, versus 10.8% in the south, despite its size and resources. Internal migration redistributes ages: interior regions age faster and lose their capacity for renewal.
Some regions record an aging index over 100%. Migration redistributes not only people but also the capacity to produce wealth and maintain social fabric.
Disparities also appear in household size, larger in poorer regions where the family remains a substitute form of protection. Integrated regions have smaller families, under pressure from expensive housing and flexible work.
Education and social protection indicators confirm these inequalities: better in the center, weaker in the interior. Migration also becomes social mobility, at the cost of increased urban pressure.
Thus, territorial inequalities have become a demographic system that reproduces center and periphery. The numbers testify to a long trajectory where space is one of the main victims of Tunisia’s political economy.
A demography without horizon? Aging, erosion of the social state, and societal sustainability
Aging is no longer a simple biological stage; it reveals the flaws of the state and society. People live longer while the social horizon shrinks. The working-age population must support the elderly while struggling to secure their own stability.
Aging is concentrated in regions impoverished by exodus. Smaller families are entrusted with greater care responsibilities without sufficient institutional support.
Aging becomes an experience of uncertainty. Social time fractures: youth in waiting, prolonged old age without guarantees.
The reduction of the social state’s role, without a solid alternative system, transforms old age into a daily negotiation with scarcity.
The question of societal sustainability arises: a longer life without dignified conditions weakens intergenerational bonds. Demography thus becomes a mirror of society’s relationship with itself.
Tunisia after the 2024 census: what the numbers say about the future of society
The 2024 census is not just a statistical document; it is an archive of Tunisia’s structural societal transformations. It shows an unprecedented slowdown in growth, low fertility linked to economic insecurity, and rapid aging without a solid social safety net.
Health coverage reaches 76%, but social coverage only 42.1%, with strong regional disparities. Progress in age is not accompanied by progress in protection.
Regional concentration is confirmed: 33% of inhabitants in the coastal center, 10.8% in the south. Migration reshapes the age map and increases urban pressure.
Families are smaller but more socially burdened. Education advances without sufficient economic opportunities. Society is more educated but less secure.
Taken together, these indicators paint a future of low renewal, rapid aging, and increasing inequalities. The most worrying aspect is not demographic decline itself, but the fragility of social sustainability.
The census does not say that Tunisia is heading toward a “demographic crisis,” but that it stands at a crossroads: rethink the development model and the role of the social state, or continue managing demographic transformations as the collateral cost of an economy that does not provide security.
