Employment Uncertainty and Fertility Decision-Making – Migrant-Native Disparities in Scandinavia

Lounela Mimmi , Stockholm University

Over the past decades, the world has witnessed significant social and demographic changes, including a declining fertility rate in Europe, a decrease in job security and an increasing flow of migrants to the Global North. Especially migrants have been affected by precarious work arrangements. However, little research has been conducted on the impact of employment uncertainty on specifically migrant fertility intentions. Using binary logistic regression models, this study looks at the effect of both objective and subjective indicators of employment uncertainty and unemployment on short-term fertility intentions using the GGS-II survey data from Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The analysis includes both migrants and Swedish-born individuals and covers men and women separately, which is rare in previous research that has focused chiefly on women only. The preliminary findings based on Swedish GGS-II data (not including the other countries yet) suggest that the impact of unemployment on fertility intentions differs between migrant and Swedish-born women and men. Specifically, being an unemployed migrant, compared to being unemployed and Swedish-born, appears to increase the likelihood of expressing a positive fertility intention. Moreover, the probability of expressing a positive fertility intention increases when a migrant woman perceives job loss as likely in the near future relative to Swedish-born women with similar job security perceptions. The study suggests that despite the importance of the institutional setting for fertility decision-making, other mechanisms are at play, too: migrants and natives seem to respond differently to labour market uncertainties and especially unemployment.

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 Presented in Session 101. Migrant Populations and Fertility