Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons^™

Research Brief No. 16 - The Effects Of Age And Background On The Fertility Patterns Of Child Migrants, Alícia Adserà, Ana M. Ferrer, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, Ben Wilson

Population Change and Lifecourse Strategic Knowledge Cluster Research/Policy Brief

This paper challenges the common notion that immigrants have more children than the native-born population. More specifically, immigrants who arrived in Canada, England or France at an early age have about the same number of children as the native-born. By examining child immigrants, the paper is able to attribute this finding to the hypothesis that, with time, immigrants adopt the destination country’s norms. The results also show that the relationship between age at migration and number of children differs for immigrants from certain countries. Likewise, the fertility patterns of child migrants also depend on their destination country.