Immigrant fertility patterns and differentials in Australia, 1971–1976

In this paper the fertility patterns and differentials among various immigrant groups in Australia are examined. Official vital statistics for the period 1971–76 are used.

Fertility ratios standardized by age and marital status suggest that the overall fertility of foreign-born women was higher in both 1971 and 1976; however, some evidence -of convergence towards an ‘Australian’ norm was found.

Four distinct patterns of fertility were noted. In two of them, Arab and South European, marital fertility was substantially higher but non-marital fertility quite low. The North-West European pattern was closest to that of the native-born; however, in the East European pattern fertility was lowest. Component analysis showed that most of the differences between the total fertility rate of Australians and those of the other groups reflect the significantly higher marital fertility rates and proportions married among the foreign-born groups.     

Application of the Own-Children Method for estimating fertility by ethnic and religious groups in the UK

Fertility across and within countries is influenced by a number of socio-economic and cultural factors, including ethnicity and potentially religion. However, apart from census data, little information is available, at least in the UK, to estimate fertility rates and thus fertility trends by ethnic and religious groups between censuses. Previously, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) has been exploited to produce national total fertility rates (TFR) by ethnic groups up to 2001 using the reverse-survival Own-Children Method (OCM). Here the LFS–OCM is assessed and refined to improve accuracy and tested against official statistics. The LFS–OCM is compared with results obtained using more straightforward techniques based on Child-Woman Ratios using the same LFS data, and differences are discussed. The refined method is applied to produce recent fertility profiles by ethnic groups, including trends in the TFR and age-specific fertility rates, showing significant and decreasing differences between groups. Furthermore, the method allows us to reliably investigate TFR within one ethnic group by other criteria, as illustrated by differences in the TFR by religious affiliation of Indian women.     

Religion and fertility in the United States: The importance of marriage patterns and hispanic origin

The marital fertility of white Catholic wives in the United States was higher than that of non-Catholic wives in 1977–1981, but when Hispanics were excluded, the differential disappeared; therefore, the Catholic-non-Catholic differential in recent years was due entirely to the higher fertility of Hispanic Catholics. The Total Fertility Rates (TFR) of Catholics were slightly lower in 1977–1981 than those for white Protestants, primarily because Catholic women tend to marry later than Protestant women. This finding was confirmed by multivariate analysis of data on children ever born. We examine some additional data and various theories to speculate on whether these patterns will last.     

When the grass is greener: Fertility decisions in a cross-national context

In research and policy discourse, conceptualizations of fertility decision-making often assume that people only consider circumstances within national borders. In an integrated Europe, citizens may know about and compare conditions across countries. Such comparisons may influence the way people think about and respond to childrearing costs. To explore this possibility and its implications, we present evidence from 44 in-depth interviews with Polish parents in the United Kingdom and Poland. Explanations of childbearing decisions involved comparisons of policy packages and living standards across countries. Individuals in Poland used richer European countries as an important reference point, rather than recent conditions in Poland. In contrast, migrants often positively assessed their relatively disadvantaged circumstances by using the Polish setting as a reference. The findings could help explain why, despite substantial policy efforts, fertility has remained at very low levels in poorer European countries, while migrants from those countries often have higher fertility abroad.     

Developing strategies for deriving small population fertility rates

Many agencies require population estimates and projections by ethnic group. These projections need ethnic-specific, age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) but their inclusion is challenging since ethnicity is not recorded at birth registration. In this paper maternity data are used in a case study of electoral wards in Bradford, West Yorkshire, to develop fertility rates for small populations for a 1991 based projection. The challenge is to capture local variations in fertility by ethnic group when data are sparse. Small areas were grouped together using cluster analysis to define combinations with similar sociodemographic and fertility experiences so that sparse data could be aggregated to estimate reliable ethnic-specific fertility rates. For comparison, the data were aggregated into the 1991 Office for National Statistics area type classification. Fertility rates by single year of age for all area types were smoothed using the Hadwiger function. For the White ethnic group there were sufficient births to create ethnic-specific, ward-level ASFRs. For other ethnicities grouping of areas was necessary. The accuracy of the ASFRs in predicting births was assessed using mean absolute percentage error. Results show that for some minority groups district-level ethnic-specific fertility rates produced the most accurate birth estimates even though they were based on a larger area. This implies that rates created may be informative about the local area for White ethnic type but not in the same way for smaller ethnic groups. In terms of grouping strategies we recommend that existing classifications are assessed to determine how well variations in rates are stratified before embarking on a custom scheme. Where population sub-groups are small in some areas, it may be more reliable to use rates derived for larger areas and apply these to local populations. Inevitably, the rates used in a projection are a compromise but hopefully will still capture important dimensions of population change.     

Migration and fertility in the Philippines: Hendershot's selectivity model revisited

A demographer compared 1983 data on 5092 currently married migrant and nonmigrant women living in the Philippines to determine whether migration was still selective in terms of fertility behavior or not. Fertility was basically the same between migrant and nonmigrant women in their early reproductive years, but clear differences existed between older migrants and nonmigrants as indicated by children ever born (CEB). In fact, migration did not significantly affect cumulative fertility at all (correlation ratio=.03). Moreover its effect was further reduced when the researchers controlled for age and duration of marriage. Besides level of education and contraceptive use status contributed more to explanations of fertility differentials (correlation ratio=.09 for both) than did migration. The mean number of CEB adjusted for all variables fell with level of education from 4.18 for those with primary education to 3.63 to those with college education. This result identified education as a means to reduce high fertility in the Philippines. On the other hand, the mean was higher among women who ever used contraception than it was for those who never used it (4.21 vs. 3.72). Apparently considerable family size motivated mothers to use contraception. Since women who migrated to cities tended to be in the beginning of their reproductive period, considerable natural increase could occur in urban areas. Therefore the Philippines needed to devise a strategy for reducing fertility among migrant women as well as strategies for other groups such as professional/career oriented women and women who remained at home to tend to children and/or the home.     

An assessment of the own-children method of estimating fertility by birthplace in Australia

This paper examines the validity of the own-children method of fertility estimates derived from the 1991 Census by a detailed investigation of mortality assumptions, the presence of non-own children, age misreporting and undercount. A comparison of fertility measures derived alternatively from the census using the own-children method and from vital statistics for the period 1987–91 indicates remarkably similar rates for Australia-born women, and plausible results for long established migrant groups. The own-children fertility levels for some recently arrived migrant groups, however, were found to be misleading. It is suggested that the own-children method is useful for the study of differential current fertility in Australia. Revised version of an essay awarded the W.D. Borrie Prize (graduate section), 1997, and presented to the session: Advances in methods for the analysis of demographic data of the 23rd General Conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, 11–17 October, Beijing. This paper is based on the author’s PhD thesis entitled:Fertility patterns of Australian selected immigrant groups, 1977–91.     

Immigration to the UK from High‐Fertility Countries: Intergenerational Adaptation and Fertility Convergence

The fertility of immigrants' children increasingly shapes the ethnic diversity of the population in Western Europe. However, few data are available on the fertility patterns of immigrants and their offspring. This article provides new fertility estimates of immigrants and immigrants' children by ethnic group in the United Kingdom that may provide better‐informed fertility assumptions for future population projection models. The impact of migration‐specific tempo effects on the period TFR of immigrants is analyzed. Among the results, intergenerational fertility transitions strongly contribute both to fertility convergence between ethnic groups and to fertility “assimilation” or “intergenerational adaptation” to the UK mainstream childbearing behavior. Ethnic fertility convergence, particularly marked for populations originating from high‐fertility countries, reflects in part decreasing fertility in sending countries and in part intergenerational adaptation to the UK mainstream. Higher educational enrollment of the daughters of immigrants may partly explain their relatively lower fertility.     

Is the fertility of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans converging to the U.S. norm?

This paper examines the process of assimilation in fertility behavior for Asians and Pacific Islanders in the US, using census-based estimates of recent fertility trends for the period 1965-1980. The authors examine fertility trends for all Asians and all Pacific Islanders, and separately for Asian Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Guamanians, Hawaiians, and Samoans. The authors also examine, for each of these groups, differential fertility by urban-rural residence, educational attainment, nativity, and year of immigration if foreign-born. The fertility of most Asian and Pacific Islander groups in the US fell substantially between 1965 and 1980, as did the fertility of the US population as a whole. The fertility of most Asian groups was initially lower than that of most Pacific Islander groups. Most Asian groups experienced fertility trends not much different from those of the US as a whole. In contrast, most Pacific Islander groups experienced faster than average fertility decline, thereby showing some evidence of assimilation toward the US fertility norm. Differential fertility conformed to familiar patterns; urban fertility tended to be lower than rural fertility. The fertility of the more-educated tended to be lower than the fertility of the less-educated. The fertility of the native-born tended to be lower than the fertility of the foreign-born. The fertility of established migrants tended to be lower than the fertility of recent migrants. Fertility tended to fall not only for each racial group as a whole, but also for each socioeconomic category.     

Migration Processes,Familial Characteristics,and Schooling Dropout Among Black Youths

This study uses data from the 2000 U.S. census to examine whether the schooling advantage of black immigrants’ children found in previous studies is robust. According to the results, the advantage associated with having migrant parents is not restricted to the children of immigrants. Black migrant parents, regardless of foreign-born status, have children with favorable schooling outcomes. Such parental-level influences, however, seem stronger among some immigrant groups than among native internal migrants. The study also suggests that the collective advantage of the children of immigrants is driven by positive migrant selectivity. Accordingly, comparisons between the children of native migrants and children in various immigrant groups reveal that the immigrant advantage is not robust. In fact, the results suggest that when immigrant ethnicity is considered, some children of immigrants may be disadvantaged relative to the children of native migrants. Among recent migrants, the children of native internal migrants also have more favorable outcomes than the children of immigrants, although these differences disappear after background factors are controlled. Further, internal-migrant and immigrant households are less likely to have characteristics that adversely affect schooling than nonmigrant households. Unsurprisingly, the children of nonmigrants have the worst outcomes among black youths.     

A note on the changing relationship between fertility and female employment rates in developed countries

In this paper we look at a panel of OECD aggregate fertility and labor market data between 1970 and 1995 and we report some striking recent developments. Total Fertility Rates (TFR) were falling and Female Participation Rates (FPR) were increasing, conforming to a well known long-run trend. Along the cross-sectional dimension, the correlation between TFR and FPR was negative and significant during the 1970's and up to the early 1980's. This seemed consistent with secular comovements. However, by the late 1980's the correlation had become positive and equally significant. We discuss our findings within the framework of standard neoclassical models of fertility and labor supply adapted to macro data, as in Butz and Ward (1979). Received: 14 April 2000/Accepted: 29 December 2000 All correspondence to Pedro Mira. Namkee Ahn is grateful for financial support received from the Bank of Spain and from Spain's Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, grant SEC97-1249. We benefited from comments by two anonymous referees and by seminar participants at FEDEA, CEMFI and ESPE-98. All remaining errors are our own. Responsible editor: John F. Ermisch.     

中国人口迁移与生育率关系研究

本文利用2000年人口普查数据,考察了中国人口迁移与生育率的关系。通过比较农村本地人口、城市本地人口和流动迁移人口三个人口群体在生育率上的差异,并进行多元统计分析,结果表明,流动迁移对生育率有着非常显著影响,城市外来人口的生育率不仅显著低于农村本地人口,而且也低于城市本地人口;远期流迁人口的生育率要低于近期流迁人口的生育率。中国人口迁移与生育率的关系出现了与已有的迁移生育率理论的不一致。1990年代中国的迁移生育率发生了转变。     

A demonstration of the effect of seasonal migration on fertility

Fertility estimates were calculated using own children data from the Mexican migrant town of Guadalupe, Michoacan. In this town, 75 percent of families have a member working in the United States, and wives are often regularly separated from their migrant husbands. Simulations by Menken (1979) and Bongaarts and Potter (1979) suggest that fertility among these women should be depressed. Our results confirmed this hypothesis, showing that the seasonal absence of migrant husbands disrupted both the level and timing of fertility. However, the effect was greater for legal than for illegal migrants, a pattern that stemmed from social factors as well as physical separation. A logistic regression analysis showed that reductions in birth probabilities are greater the longer a couple is separated, and that these reductions are in the range expected from prior simulations.     

The influence of human fertility on the economic conditions of the rural population in poland

Summary In 1970, Polish women in agricultural households reported larger numbers of children born alive than women in other occupations. When controlling for the influence of age at marriage and duration of marriage, the average number of children born per women among the farming population increased directly with the amount of privately owned agricultural land. Consistently, women whose principal source of livelihood was derived from non-agricultural sources even though they resided in villages, showed lower fertility than those in the agricultural sector, but significantly higher fertility than city women. This study is based on the five per cent sample of ever-married women between 15 and 70 years of age interviewed about their past reproductive histories in Poland during the 1970 Census of Population.The conclusions identify the high level of human fertility in rural populations as the main determinant of economic status among Polish peasants whose sources of support derive primarily from farming. Additional evidence supporting the hypothesis of dependence of the agricultural economy on the force of human reproduction is based on data for Slovakia and the Czech regions.     

Residence background and fertility in Greater Bombay

Abstract The residence background of wives who migrate to metropolitan areas plays an important role in determining their fertility. From the data collected during 1966, relating to 7,872 currently married women of Greater Bombay, an attempt was made to establish differentials in marital fertility by residence background of the wives. This was categorized into three groups - non-migrants, urban migrants and rural migrants. It was observed that rural migrant wives exhibited significantly higher fertility compared with the other two groups, and this was explained by their lower educational attainment. Between the non-migrant and the urban migrant wives the latter consistently showed lower fertility for all age groups up to 40, while there was a reversal in the age group 40 and above, where non-migrants exhibited lower fertility. The urban migrant wives showed a somewhat higher level of education, most likely on account of selectivity, compared to the non-migrants. However, presence of a sizeable number of Parsee wives, characterized by a distinct urban culture and considerably lower fertility, was largely responsible for the low fertility of the non-migrant wives in the age group 40 and above. The variable that has emerged as the most influential in creating fertility differentials is education of the wife, which is shown to be negatively associated with the level of fertility. Wife's education explains to a large extent the observed fertility differentials by residence background.     

Has East Germany Overtaken West Germany? Recent Trends in Order‐Specific Fertility

Some 20 years after reunification, the contrast between East and West Germany offers a natural experiment for studying the degree of persistence of Communist-era family patterns, the effects of economic change, and fertility postponement. After reunification, period fertility rates plummeted in the former East Germany to record low levels. Since the mid-1990s, however, period fertility rates have been rising in East Germany, in contrast to the nearly constant rates seen in the West. By 2008, the TFR of East Germany had overtaken that of the West. We explore why fertility in East Germany is higher than in West Germany, despite unfavorable economic circumstances in the East. We address this and related questions by (a) presenting an account of the persisting East/West differences in attitudes toward and constraints on childbearing, (b) conducting an order-specific fertility analysis of recent fertility trends, and (c) projecting completed fertility for the recent East and west German cohorts. In addition to using the Human Fertility Database, perinatal statistics allow us to calculate a tempo-corrected TFR for East and West Germany.     

稳定低生育水平是缓解“四二一”担忧的一个安民告示

自我国实行计划生育政策以来．“四二一”家庭的问题受到人们的广泛关注。本文从人口学、社会学的角度分析认为“四二一”家庭不会成为我国家庭的主要人口结构形式．但如果生育率持续过低、过久则有可能引发倒金字塔型的社会人口结构。本文根据中国国家老龄委公布的“人口老龄化百年人口预测数据”。对我国高、中、低三种生育方案进行比较,发现把总和生育率稳定在1.8±0.1的中方案是比较适合我国21世纪人口发展的方案。避免生育率过低或过高既能控制我国人口总量增长过快。又能避免人口老龄化的程度和速度加剧．是控制人口与缓解人口老龄化的最优平衡点．     

Migrant fertility in Ghana: selection versus adaptation and disruption as causal mechanisms

The aim of the study presented in this paper is to disentangle the roles of three mechanisms -- selection, adaptation, and disruption -- in influencing migrant fertility in Ghana. Using data from the 1998 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we fit Poisson and sequential logit regression models to discern the effects of the above mechanisms on cumulative fertility and annual probabilities of birth. Characteristics of migrants from four types of migration stream are examined and compared with those of non-migrants at origin and destination. We find substantial support for the selection hypothesis among both rural-urban and urban-rural migrants. Disruption is evident only in the fertility timing of second and higher-order births in Ghana. Our finding that migrants bear children at about the same rates as the natives at destination implies that the growth rate of cities will slow down quickly and that the rural population will continue to have high fertility. Thus to achieve a reduction in the national fertility level, family planning activities need to be directed towards rural areas.     

Revolution,war and modernization: Population policy and fertility change in Iran

Fertility trends in Iran over recent decades can be plausibly related to a number of causal factors. Population policy shifts were quite marked, and were related to political upheaval and war, which influenced both official policy and popular perceptions of the nation’s need for children. A range of developmental factors were also important. The key fertility trends to be explained include the rise to an exceptionally high level in the early 1980s (a TFR of just below 7), and the speed of the subsequent decline to a TFR of about 2.7 in 1996. As well as estimating the proximate determinants of these trends, the paper sets them in their political and developmental context. Iran’s fertility trends are then compared with those of Islamic countries of North Africa and West Asia to gain additional insights into possible causal factors. An adequate explanation of fertility change in Iran needs to draw on elements of a number of theories of fertility transition.     

Analysis of the determinants of fertility decline in the Czech Republic

In this paper, we analyze the decline in the total fertility rate (TFR) in the Czech Republic during the economic transition. To identify transition-specific features of this decline, we estimate a Heckman–Walker multistate model of the birth process using data from the 1998 Family and Fertility Survey. We find that the negative effect of transition on TFR is mostly driven by a sharply increased influence of higher education, limited ability to combine employment with childbearing and lack of adequate childcare facilities. We also detect a significant role of the increased use of contraception, motivated by both economic and demographic reasons.