The impact of economic crises on population dynamics has long been on demographers’ agenda. Research on this topic shows that economic uncertainty negatively influences fertility decisions in terms of timing, inducing a postponement of childbearing, and possibly also affecting the number of children people choose to have. However, despite the rich and growing body of literature on the association between economic uncertainty and childbearing, evidence regarding migrants’ fertility behaviour during recessions is scarce.
Migrants are economically more fragile than natives because they are less integrated into society and the labour market. They are usually overrepresented among the unemployed and in more precarious jobs, and might face even greater insecurity during recessions when jobs are scarcer. In this new study, Giammarco Alderotti (University of Florence), Eleonora Mussino (Stockholm University) and Chiara Ludovica Comolli (University of Bologna) explored childbearing behaviour during the Great Recession (2010-2015) in Italy and Sweden across two dimensions of vulnerability: migration background (i.e., country of origin and length of stay in the destination country) and labour market uncertainty. Using the Swedish population registers and the Italian Labor Force Survey, they investigated to what extent childbearing behaviours changed during the years of crisis in comparison to the pre-crisis (2006–2009) period among native and migrant women with different employment statuses. The number of kids women already had was considered in their analyses.
Their results show that the chances of becoming a mother in the aftermath of the Great Recession decreased substantially among recently arrived migrant women, while the drop was smaller among long-term migrants.
Surprisingly, they found that unemployment or career instability negatively affected childbearing among natives but not among migrant women in both countries. Their analyses suggest that the link between labour market uncertainty and childbearing depends on the national context more than the link between migration background and childbearing. Unemployment represented a clear disadvantage and increasingly so after the Great Recession in Italy, especially among natives. In Sweden, stable employment represented a clear advantage only for first births among natives. Finally, the country comparison demonstrated that while the duration of stay and the weaker labour market attachment reduced the chances of motherhood in both countries, the negative effect of unemployment was particularly strong in Italy.
Finally, the study confirms that the effect of the economic crisis on fertility behaviour has been much smaller for the more integrated migrants in comparison to the newly arrived, particularly in Sweden, a country where, until now, migrants have enjoyed equal and generous social rights.