The Foreign-Born and the Native-Born: Are Their Elderly Migration and Settlement Growth Patterns Different?

Abstract

This chapter illustrates a general method for analyzing the demographic processes that contribute to population growth and distribution in a multiregional population system that is “open” to international migration. The method incorporates a historical perspective that can be used to trace dynamic population processes as they evolve over time and space. It uses an open multiregional projection model framework for identifying the contributions to regional growth rates made by each of the principal demographic components of change: fertility, mortality, outmigration, inmigration, emigration, and immigration. At the same time, the method recognizes the importance of disaggregating the native-born and foreign-born populations. Publically available data and indirect estimation techniques are used to develop the inputs for the projection model, with which the regional population changes are reconstructed for each five-year period between 1950 and 1990. Regional growth rates for the native-born and foreign-born populations are partitioned into the separate demographic components of change, and the projection model also identifies the separate contributions made by each of the sub-populations. This allows a direct comparison of the impacts of immigration with those of native-born contributions effected through internal migration and natural increase.