Differential Fertility of Nativity-Parentage Groups in the United States: The Assimilation of European Female Foreign Stock.

The article focuses on the study of immigration and assimilation in the United States. The immigration to the U.S. has greatly reduced due to the immigration laws enacted in the 1920s. Assimilation has been analyzed with reference to the dissimilarity of foreign-born and second generation fertility patterns. The foreign-born population in the United States exhibits different fertility than the native Americans. Fertility has been chosen as the indicator of assimilation, because it is essentially a familial variable, and the family, is generally recognized to be a basic unit of society, one of the most stable social institutions, and less variable than material culture. Thus, if generational change toward the modal American fertility patterns were to be noted here, it would constitute an indicator of a more personally committed stance toward the host society than some of the more superficial indices of assimilation, such as dress, naturalization, or speech. The degree to which the second generation adopts the family values of the host society, when compared with the degree to which the family values of the foreign-born generation are retained, yields an indication of the amount of assimilation by the second generation.