The fertility of recent migrants to England and Wales

A decade of life-course research on fertility of immigrants and their descendants in Europe

“…The TFR for immigrant women is often relatively high, sometimes even if calculated for women from low-fertility countries. Previous research relates elevated migrant fertility either to the interrelationship between migration and family formation -many women move to form a family, as the studies of this SC show -or to tempo effects distinguishing between pre-migration low fertility and post-migration high fertility (Milewski 2007;Robards and Berrington 2016;Toulemon 2004).…”

“…Many recent studies recommend a careful use of the TFR for immigrants, and some suggest that the TFR as a synthetic cohort measure should not be used at all since the immigrant TFR does not reflect the underlying lifetime propensity to have children and it is unclear what the hypothetical population is for the immigrant TFR (Murphy 2016;Robards and Berrington 2016). While we agree with the criticism by previous research, we argue that aggregated fertility measures can be used, but as with parityspecific rates, duration since immigration should be explicitly considered.…”

“…While we agree with the criticism by previous research, we argue that aggregated fertility measures can be used, but as with parityspecific rates, duration since immigration should be explicitly considered. Robards and Berrington (2016) have calculated age-specific fertility rates for immigrants by years since migration. We suggest that duration-specific fertility rates (or parity-specific fertility rates by duration) can be summed up to produce the duration-based TFR, or TFRd, for immigrants as a summary measure.…”

“…This research stream has also challenged the uncritical use of aggregated fertility measures for studying migrant fertility, often used by national statistical offices (especially the period TFR). Immigrant total fertility may be high (Sobotka 2008) because of the composition of the immigrant group; the population at risk for calculating the total fertility may consist mostly of married women with short marriage durations (Robards and Berrington 2016;Toulemon 2004).…”

Evolution of the shape of the fertility curve: Why might some countries develop a bimodal curve?

“…As with the trends seen in Figure 2, the ASFR2 curve has become wider for the foreign population without it becoming a bimodal distribution (Figure 3b). However, immigrant fertility rates are distorted, as explained by Parrado (2011), Dubuc (2012, Robards and Berrington (2016), and Burkimsher, Rossier, and Wanner (unpublished). Sometimes the TFR1 exceeds unity -a logical impossibility in cohort terms as childlessness cannot be less than zero.…”