Just two or three decades ago in the Maghreb, and less than one decade ago in the Mashreq, large families were the rule. The reproductive life of an average couple included the births of seven to nine children. Less than one generation later, at the beginning of the 1990s, young adults construct families which, once complete, will be less than half the size of those in which they grew up. The decline in the Maghreb recalls the experience a quarter of a century ago in southern Europe, from Catholic Italy and Spain to Orthodox Greece and, by it magnitude, that of the Asian "dragons." But both of these sets of societies emerged against completely different backdrops: burgeoning secularization in Mediterranean Europe and industrial take-off in East Asia. A similar point of transition is occurring in Arab countries, but there the revitalization of Islam and persistent underdevelopment creates an appearance of contradictory conditions. In all the Mediterranean Arab countries, the rate of population growth has actually begun to decline.