Fertility of immigrants and their descendants in west Germany. An event-history-approach

The paper investigates the impact of international migration on the transitions to a first, second, and third child among women from Turkey, former Yugoslavian states, Greece, Spain, and Italy who have immigrated to West Germany. A distinction is made between first-generation immigrants and their descendants.

International migration is associated with rapid changes in the migrants’ environment. These changes usually take place within a much shorter time span than societies alter as a whole. Immigrants have to cope with these changes quickly. Therefore, a study of the demographic behavior of migrants enables us to gain insights into the patterns and speed of the demographic responses of individuals or groups to the sudden environmental changes they are exposed to. The life-course approach allows us to analyze the sequencing of several events, and, therefore, to study the short-term as well as the long-term effects of migration on a person’s life.

The project applies a hazard regression analysis to data of the German Socio-Economic Panel study. The results show that the transition rates to a first birth of first-generation immigrants are elevated shortly after they move country. Elevated birth risks that occur shortly following the immigration are traced back to an interrelation of events - these are migration, marriage, and first birth. We do not find evidence of a fertility-disruption effect after immigration. The analyses of the parities 2 and 3 show the importance of socialization in childbearing behavior: first-generation immigrants from Turkey have higher transition rates to second and third births than have women from South and South-Eastern European countries, and the fertility patterns of migrant descendants resemble more closely those of West Germans than that of the first immigrant generation.