American Immigration, Fertility, and Race Suicide at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

The basis for nineteenth-century fears of race suicide in United States is examined namely the differential fertility of immigrant women native-born women of foreign parentage and native-born women of native parentage. The analysis is based on 1900 Public Use Sample a national random sample of households drawn from federal census which includes information on fertility of over 22000 women between ages of 15 and 44. Our study reports fertility differentials at turn of century and explores determinants of contrasting levels of childbearing. The results show that overall fertility levels cannot be explained by degree of American assimilation. We found that second-generation women experienced strikingly low overall fertility relative to both foreign-born women and native-born women of native parentage. Moreover data indicate that ethnic population had lower fertility than third-generation native-born population. (EXCERPT)