Spatio-temporal geostatistical modeling for French fertility predictions

Fertility evolution in France shows a countertrend compared to the common pattern of fertility in Europe. Based on aggregate statistics, such as the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the population of France, as compared to all the other European countries, has one of the highest levels of fertility. The TFR has increased in the last 15 years although the growth rate is decreasing. Indeed the TFR shows a tendency to stabilize at around 2.0, as confirmed, with small variability, for each region. The aim of the paper is to propose spatio-temporal geostatistical modeling for the French TFR. In particular, a stochastic method for spatio-temporal prediction is proposed. Although time series analysis has been widely used to describe the temporal evolution of various demographic variables, recently increasing attention has also been given to the study of the spatial distribution of these variables. Thus, in this paper, geostatistical spatio-temporal tools are appropriately used to study simultaneously both the spatial and the temporal behavior of the regional TFR in France for prediction purposes.