Immigration's Impact on U.S. Fertility: An Exploratory Analysis of Recent Trends

Carl Schmertmann, Florida State University
Gray Swicegood, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Michael Sobczak, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Immigration may be contributing substantially to changes in the fertility profile of the United States. Although approximately 10% of the population was foreign born, foreign-born mothers accounted for nearly one in five American births in 1998. Analysis of immigration's impact on U.S. fertility requires adequate measures of period fertility, disaggregated by nativity and mother's country of birth. These measures currently do not exist. We estimate period fertility rates for foreign-born women, using alternative methods (some innovative) and several data sources. We assess the consistency of these measures. We then decompose changes in overall U.S. fertility from 1970 to the present, in order to assess how changes in various dimensions of nativity and immigrant composition over the past thirty years have contributed to changes in overall U.S. period fertility over the same time span, and to changes in racial/ethnic fertility differentials. Extended abstract at http://mailer.fsu.edu/~schmert/paa02/schmertmann_swicegood_bean_paa_abstract.pdf