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Early Childbearing of Immigrant Women and their Descendants in a Country with Low and Late Fertility, the Case of Spain

Jesús García Gómez, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Centre D'Estudis demogràfics (CED)
Emilio A. Parrado, University of Pennsylvania
Alberto Del Rey Poveda, University of Salamanca
Mikolaj Stanek, University of Salamanca
Chiara Dello Iacono, Universidad de Salamanca

While many studies have been carried out on the immigrants’ fertility in Spain, immigrant descendants’ reproductive patterns have not yet been systematically explored. This study investigates the early childbearing (prior to the age of 25), of the Maghrebi and Latin American immigrants and their descendants (1.5 and 2nd generations) in Spain between 2011-2015 thanks to a new database which links Natural Movement of the Population Records to a 10% sample of the 2011 Spanish Census. Poisson Regression models are applied, with the dependent variable being the number of children that these women have had between January 2011 and December 2015. Two main conclusions are reached. While there is a process of intergenerational convergence in the case of Latin American immigrants that eliminates the differences with respect to the native population, in the case of Maghrebi immigrants the great difference that exists in those who arrive in Spain at more than 16 years of age is reduced but does not disappear in the 2nd generation. The age of arrival is a decisive factor with respect to the early transition to motherhood; this transition is more similar to that of the natives in those immigrants who have arrived at an earlier age.

Keywords: Fertility and childbirth, International migration, Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS), Census data

See paper.

  Presented in Session P17.