Journal Article

First child of immigrant workers and their descendants in West Germany: interrelation of events, disruption, or adaptation?

Milewski, N.
Demographic Research, 17:29, 859–896 (2007)

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of immigration on the transition to motherhood among women from Turkey, Italy, Spain, Greece, and the former Yugoslavia in West Germany. A hazard-regression analysis is applied to data of the German Socio-Economic Panel study. We distinguish between the first and second immigrant generation. 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 analysis indicates that second-generation immigrants are more adapted to the lower fertility levels of West Germans than their mothers’ generation is.
Keywords: Germany, fertility
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