Recent Trends in Immigrant Fertility in Australia
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The Effects of Australia’s Migration Program on Immigrant Fertility Over Time Bernard Baffour 1
& James
Raymer 1 & Ann Evans 1
# Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Immigration to low fertility countries provides both needed labour and demographic growth. As immigrants often arrive as young adults, they may also contribute to population growth in the destination country through their births. In this research, we assembled data from quinquennial censuses and annual birth registers to analyse fertility amongst immigrants in Australia. We use these data to compare the number of births to immigrant women to Australian-born women. These data are also used to describe 35 years of changes that have occurred in Australia by tracking the agespecific fertility patterns of 18 different immigrant groups in Australia from 1981 to 2016. We find that age-specific fertility rates of immigrants have become more similar to those exhibited by the Australia-born population over time. Across immigrant groups and destinations in Australia, however, we find differences in both the levels and trends over time. Keywords Immigration . Births . Australia . Regional population growth
Introduction In this study, we study the heterogeneity of immigrants and their contributions to the number of births in Australia, and how both have evolved over time. We are ultimately interested in understanding the long-term implications of large-scale immigration to
* Bernard Baffour [email protected] James Raymer [email protected] Ann Evans [email protected]
1
School of Demography, Australian National University, 9 Fellows Road, Acton, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 2601, Australia
Baffour B. et al.
demographic and social change. For low fertility societies, this is important because of the role that immigration provides in terms of needed labour and population growth. In this regard, Australia is similar to most developed countries in the world, where immigrants add both youth (labour) and births to the population (see, e.g. Mussino and Strozza 2012 on Italy; Andersson 2004 on Sweden; Robards and Berrington 2016 on England and Wales). Since the end of World War II, the patterns of immigration to Australia have changed greatly, not just in the levels but also in the characteristics of the migrants. Today, Australia is a culturally diverse country with over 50% of its population having at least one parent born overseas. To provide a sense of the change that has occurred, in 1981, 68% of immigration to Australia consisted of people born in Europe or New Zealand and 19% born in Asia; in 2016, the corresponding percentages were the opposite, 21% and 60%, respectively. The changes in the origins of immigration occurred largely in response to Australia’s migration program that increasingly focused on skills, levels of English and employment needs, rather than ethnicity or country of origin. Since 2006, net overseas migration has contributed at least 50% of total population growth. This population growth occurred in the context o
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