Fertility of nationals and foreigners in Spain, Italy, and Greece during and after the economic recession and refugee crisis

Byron Kotzamanis

doi:10.14198/ingeo.19061

Abstract

This article provides an overview of trends in fertility of foreign and national women in Greece, Spain, and Italy during the last decade and before the Covid pandemic. It focuses on the fertility of foreigners and compares this with that of ‘nationals’. The main analysis focuses on a period marked, firstly, by the economic recession and stagnation, and then by the recent wave of the ‘refugee crisis’. Foreigner fertility in the three south Mediterranean countries differs significantly from that of nationals, with the former having higher fertility rates and lower mean age at childbearing. However, although foreigners make a large contribution to births, their impact on period fertility (total fertility rate or TFR) is limited. At the same time, although the fertility of both groups decreased during the first years of the recession, foreigner TFRs fell faster in both absolute and relative terms in Italy and Greece. However, after 2014, the foreigner period fertility among the three countries differs as a relative stabilisation is observed in Spain and Italy, while indicators rise in Greece. This divergence is due to the various composition changes in the settled after-2014 foreigners in the three countries and the strong recovery of foreigner births in Greece (as fertility in Greece was much more affected by the recession).

Highlights

European post-war populations are characterized by an increasing share of immigrants and their descendants, and the recent “refugee crisis” has significantly affected migration streams and foreign settlers’ profile in some European countries (Arslan et al, 2014 & 2016; King & Okólski, 2019; OECD, 2019)
It must be noted that our comparative analysis is hampered by limited data availability, as estimations on the age distribution of foreigners and nationals have been available annually only after 2008 in Greece, 1995 in Spain and 1994 in Italy, while the repartition of births per age and nationality varies7
In Greece and Italy, (a) foreigners’ fertility rates at all ages fell between 2009 and 2014, slightly more in the first country than in the second, (b) Italians and Greeks women rates have fallen only at ages below 35 and (c) between 15 and 35 years the rates decrease is faster for foreigners than for nationals, a fact that can be attributed to the greater vulnerability of the first group to unfavourable economic conditions

Summary

Introduction

European post-war populations are characterized by an increasing share of immigrants and their descendants, and the recent “refugee crisis” has significantly affected migration streams and foreign settlers’ profile in some European countries (Arslan et al, 2014 & 2016; King & Okólski, 2019; OECD, 2019). Spain, Italy and Greece, traditionally emigration countries before 1980, received thousands of economic immigrants during 1990 and 2010 (Arango, 2000; Cornelius, 2004; Bonifazi, 2013; Bonifazi & Strozza, 2017; Strozza, & De Santis, 2017; Kotzamanis & Karkanis, 2018; Colombo & Dalla Zuanna, 2019), a verified fact by the last censuses as well as by the population estimations of their Statistical Authorities (Table 1). The official statistics in all European countries have been collecting more and more information concerning immigrants and their descendants, and immigrant fertility has emerged as an important research topic during the last two decades, especially in countries having long migration tradition (Sobotka, 2008; Kulu & González-Ferrer, 2014; Adserà & Ferrer, 2015; Kulu et al, 2015; Kulu, Milewski, Hannemann, & Mikolai, 2019). During the last two decades the largest part of research has been focusing on fertility behavior at individual level, applying a life-course perspective to family formation and subsequent immigrant births

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Conclusion