On the multifaceted impact of migration on the fertility of receiving countries: Methodological insights and contemporary evidence for Europe, the United States, and Australia

Abstract

BACKGROUND Within the context of increasing migration flows and persisting low fertility rates in more developed areas, focus has been placed on the impact of migration on the fertility of receiving countries. OBJECTIVE The paper examines the effect of migration on the fertility of selected European countries, the United States, and Australia for the 2009-2015 period. METHODS We provide methodological insights and evidence derived from comparisons of estimates of age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) and total fertility rates (TFRs) of native-born or foreign-born women, or female citizens or noncitizens. RESULTS The results show that although the United States and Australia are seen as model countries of migration, the contribution of migrants to the levels and trends in the TFR and in the total number of births in these countries seems to be less significant than in some European countries. Our results also show that differences in the overall TFRs of the United States and selected European countries are driven more by the differences in the TFRs of native-born women than by the net effect of migration. CONCLUSIONS Our study suggests that the impact of migration on fertility is a multifaceted issue, going far beyond the commonly used net effect of migration on increases in a country's TFR.

Migration, Family Formation and Fertility in the Americas

“…Recent studies of immigrant fertility in the United States and Europe document a wide range of fertility rates among immigrant women and in many instances above the rates of native-born women (Sobotka 2008;Bagavos 2019;Volant et al 2019). However, these same studies demonstrate that immigrant fertility has negligible effects on increases in the destination country total fertility rate because immigrants constitute a relatively small proportion of the population (Sobotka 2008;Bagavos 2019;Volant et al 2019). Our findings suggest that the fertility of future cohorts of immigrant women may be even lower than projections of fertility in their origin countries, due to migration's disruptive effects on family formation and the selection of divorced persons into migration.…”

“…The context for these early studies was comparatively high fertility in rural areas and much lower fertility in urban destinations. More recently, with the growth in international migration from high-fertility developing countries to the United States, Europe, and other low-fertility destinations, the research focus has shifted to immigrant fertility (e.g., Sobotka 2008;Bogavos 2019). One vein in this scholarship is motivated by questions about immigrant fertility's potential impact on host societies' future ethnic composition (Kahn 1988;Bean, Swicegood and Berg 2000;Carter 2000).…”

Demography of family change in Europe

“…In addition, migration among women is often interrelated with childbearing (see Andersson in this volume). Rising numbers of migrants have contributed to the sharp increase in the number and the share of births to parents of migrant or mixed origin in Europe (Bagavos 2019). For instance, in Austria, foreign-born women accounted for 26 per cent of the female population of reproductive age (15-49) and 34 per cent of all births in 2018 (Zeman et al 2019).…”

On the contribution of foreign-born populations to overall population change in Europe: Methodological insights and contemporary evidence for 31 European countries

“…Second, this direct effect of the foreign-born population on population change is combined with an indirect effect related to births and deaths among migrants and, therefore, to their contributions to the overall level of natural change. Thus, the contributions of migrants to population change can differ from those of natives or across countries because of the differences between these populations in terms of their fertility (Bagavos 2019;Sobotka 2008;Sevak and Schmidt 2008), mortality (Aldridge et al 2018), and age structure (Alho 2008).…”