This paper provides an overview of the relationships between poverty and fertility behaviour in Sub-Saharan Africa. Data from Demographic and Health Surveys carried out in 25 countries are used to examine differentials and changes by economic status in fertility, contraceptive use and age at marriage. Multivariate analyses are also performed to estimate the effect of economic status on fertility controlling for education and place of residence. Our results show among others that differentials by economic status in fertility, contraceptive use and age at marriage are observed in all the 25 countries studied. Overall, the poorest women have a larger number of children, marry younger and useless contraceptive methods. The fertility differentials by economic status also persist after controlling for education and place of residence , suggesting that poverty does constitute a break to fertility decline. Our analyses also show that fertility has decreased among the poorest women in countries where the fertility transition is well under way, and that the overall fertility changes are much more rapid than one would expect from purely compositional changes in terms of economic status, education and place of residence.