The Contributions of the Fertility of Women with Immigrant Backgrounds to the Low Fertility Regime in Finland

Kelsey Wright , University of Helsinki, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Citlali` Trigos-Raczkowski, University of Helsinki
Silvia Loi, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Joonas Pitkänen, University of Helsinki
Pekka Martikainen, University of Helsinki
Mikko Myrskyla, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Finland has recently experienced one of the strongest declines in total fertility rate (TFR) in the Nordics, placing population momentum well below replacement. Early work on cohort fertility in Finland suggests that quantum declines in progression to first births, long-term uncertainty in union dynamics, and variability in employment prospects may all be significant contributors. However, we do not know whether and how much the increase in the amount and diversity of immigration has contributed to the low fertility regime in Finland. We use demographic techniques to ask and answer how the fertility of women with 1st, 2nd, and 2.5 immigrant backgrounds contributes to overall Finnish fertility over the thirty years between 1987 and 2018. We find that the fertility rates of women with 2nd generation or 2.5 generation immigrant backgrounds are systematically lower than both 1st generation immigrant women and native Finnish women. This suggests that some contextual process is driving 2nd generation immigrant women to even lower fertility than is being observed in their parental generation or among their native Finnish peers. We also observe that the native Finnish TFR begins to diverge from the total TFR in the early 2000s. The fertility of 1st generation immigrant women prevented the total TFR from falling even lower than it could have from 2010-2018, thus preventing a limited amount of population aging in the short term. Finally, we find that women from all immigrant background groups demonstrate fertility postponement over time; however, accompanying quantum adjustments differ by immigrant background status.

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 Presented in Session P1. Fertility, Family, Life Course