Fertility of Immigrants

This book examines fertility patterns of post-war labor migrants and their descendants in Germany. It includes an introduction to the post-war migration history of Germany and a thorough review of the international literature on fertility of migrants and cultural sub-groups. The author uses data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study and applies event-history techniques to test a set of competing hypotheses derived from the literature. The analysis finds evidence for the effects of adaptation, socialization and composition, as well as for an interrelation of events. It does not however find evidence for a disruptive influence of migration on childbearing behavior. The book shows the advantages of a longitudinal research design over the conventional cross-sectional approach and sets a new standard for research on the fertility of international migrants and their descendants in western European receiving societies.

Résumé
This volume, Fertility of Immigrants: A Two-Generational Approach in Germany by Dr. Nadja Milewski, is the sixth book of a series of Demographic Research Monographs published by Springer Verlag. Dr. Milewski is now working for the University of Rostock, but at the time she wrote the book, she was a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. The book is a slightly-revised version of her doctoral dissertation (Fertility of Immigrants and Their Descendants in West Germany: An Event History Approach), which she completed at the Max Planck Institute and submitted to the University of Rostock. She was awarded highest honors, summa cum laude, for her dissertation. As Professor Jan Hoem wrote in his review of Dr. Milewski's dissertation, the research focuses on the patterns and levels of childbearing among immigrant women. Given Germany's varied immigration experience with refugees, asylum seekers, guest workers, and foreign-born persons of German ancestry, Dr. Milewski's topic is of particular interest, especially with regard to differences in the patterns and levels of childbearing among various kinds of immigrants to Germany vs. native-born Germans. Numerous empirical and theoretical studies of childbearing among immigrants to various countries have been published and Dr. Milewski carefully reviews them. While earlier studies have tended to be rather fragmentary, particularly for European populations, Dr. Milewski's research provides a comp- hensive picture of the recent female fertility of post-war migrants and their desc- dants in West Germany, with an emphasis on migrants who came to Germany to work.

Contenu
Introduction.- Theory and Empirical Findings in Previous Investigations: Migration and Fertility; Family-Formation Context in the Countries of Origin; Socio-Demographic Characteristics of 'Guest Workers' and Their Descendants in Germany; Research Summary: Fertility of 'Guest Workers' in Germany; Research Approach and Working Hypotheses.- Empirical Analysis: Data, Method, and Explanatory Variables; Introductory Description of the Sample; Results: Transition to a First Child; Results: Transition to a Second Child; Results: Transition to a Third Child.- Discussion.- Summary.