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It is well known that migrant fertility is associated with age at migration, but little is known about this relationship for forced migrants. We study an example of displacement in which the entire population of Finnish Karelia was forced to move elsewhere in Finland in the 1940s. This displacement was unique because of its size and scale, because we have data on almost the whole population of both men and women who moved, and because of the similarity between origin and destination. These aspects enable us to investigate the disruptive impact of forced migration, net of other factors such as adaptation and selection. For all ages at migration from one to 20, female forced migrants had lower levels of completed fertility than similar women born in present-day Finland, which suggests a permanent impact of migration. However, women born in the same year as the initial forced migration showed no difference, which may indicate the presence of a counterbalancing fertility-increasing effect, as observed elsewhere for people born during a humanitarian crisis. There is less evidence of an impact for men, which suggests a gendered impact of forced migration-and its timing-on fertility. Results are similar after controlling for social and spatial mobility, indicating that there may be no major trade-off between reproduction and these forms of mobility., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors.)

Immigrant women who have lived longer in a destination often have relatively low levels of fertility, which is sometimes taken as evidence of the adaptation of behavior. This evidence is almost exclusively based on studies of immigrants from high-fertility settings, while the fertility of immigrants from low-fertility settings has been largely overlooked. Research has also rarely studied the fertility of immigrants who migrated as children, despite the methodological advantages of applying such an approach. This study focuses on women who grew up in Sweden with a migration background from low-fertility origins. We expect that Sweden's welfare regime makes it easier for women to combine childbearing and working life, regardless of migration background, thereby facilitating an adaptation of fertility behavior toward that prevailing in Sweden. We find evidence of adaptation in terms of birth timing for at least half of the country-origin groups that we study, but very little evidence of adaptation in terms of completed fertility. Further, we find that, in comparison with ancestral Swedes, completed fertility differentials are larger for second-generation individuals than for immigrants who arrived during childhood. This is evidence against the notion of "straight-line" adaptation for immigrants and the children of immigrants who are born in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational differences in female cohort fertility vary strongly across high-income countries and over time, but knowledge about how educational fertility differentials play out at the sub-national regional level is limited. Examining these sub-national regional patterns might improve our understanding of national patterns, as regionally varying contextual conditions may affect fertility. This study provides for the first time for a large number of European countries a comprehensive account of educational differences in the cohort fertility rate (CFR) at the sub-national regional level. We harmonise data from population registers, censuses, and large-sample surveys for 15 countries to measure women's completed fertility by educational level and region of residence at the end of the reproductive lifespan. In order to explore associations between educational differences in CFRs and levels of economic development, we link our data to regional GDP per capita. Empirical Bayesian estimation is used to reduce uncertainty in the regional fertility estimates. We document an overall negative gradient between the CFR and level of education, and notable regional variation in the gradient. The steepness of the gradient is inversely related to the economic development level. It is steepest in the least developed regions and close to zero in the most developed regions. This tendency is observed within countries as well as across all regions of all countries. Our findings underline the variability of educational gradients in women's fertility, suggest that higher levels of development may be associated with less negative gradients, and call for more in-depth sub-national-level fertility analyses by education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Theories predict that the timing of childbearing and number of children born are determined by multiple socio‐economic factors. Despite this, many methods cannot investigate the interrelationships between these determinants, including the direct and indirect influence that they have on fertility over the life course. Here we use the parametric g‐formula to examine the interdependent influences of time‐varying socio‐economic processes—education, employment status and partnership status—on fertility. To demonstrate this approach, we study a cohort of women who were born in the UK in 1970. Our results show that socio‐economic processes play an important role in determining fertility, not only directly but also indirectly. We show that increasing attendance in higher education has a largely direct effect on early childbearing up to age 25 years, resulting in a substantial increase in childlessness. However, childbearing at later ages is dominated by an indirect effect of education on fertility, via partnership status and employment status, that is twice as large as the direct effect. We also use the g‐formula to examine bias due to unobserved heterogeneity, and we demonstrate that our results appear to be robust. We conclude that the method provides a valuable tool for mediation analysis in studies of interdependent life course processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Measures of community population composition, such as residential segregation, are important theoretical mechanisms that have the potential to explain differences in fertility between immigrants, their descendants, and destination natives. However, only a handful of studies explore these mechanisms, and most are limited by the fact that they carry out cross‐sectional analysis. This study proposes a new approach, which focuses on community composition in childhood. It uses longitudinal census data and registered births in England and Wales to investigate the relationship between completed fertility and multiple measures of community composition, including residential segregation. The results show that the fertility of immigrants is closer to native fertility if they grow up in less segregated areas. This provides evidence in support of the childhood socialisation hypothesis. Furthermore, residential segregation explains some of the variation in completed fertility for second‐generation women from Pakistan and Bangladesh, the only second‐generation group to have significantly higher completed fertility than natives. This suggests one reason why the fertility of some South Asians in England and Wales may remain “culturally entrenched.” All of these findings are consistent for different measures of community composition. They are also easier to interpret than the results of previous research because exposure is measured before childbearing has commenced, therefore avoiding many issues relating to selection, simultaneity, and conditioning on the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the fertility of women who migrated as children to one of three OECD countries—Canada, the United Kingdom, and France—and how it differs from that of native-born women, by age at migration. By looking at child migrants whose fertility behavior is neither interrupted by the migration event nor confounded by selection, the authors obtain a unique perspective on the adaptation process as a mechanism that explains variation in observed foreign and native-born fertility differentials. The authors find patterns that are broadly consistent with the adaptation hypothesis—which posits that as migrants become accustomed to their host countries, their fertility norms begin to resemble those of the native population—and, on average, limited cross-national variation in fertility differentials. The effect of exposure to the host country, however, seems to vary by country of origin, a finding that underscores the importance of taking into account the heterogeneity of the foreign-born population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]