Fertility intentions within a three-year time frame: a comparison between migrant and native Italian women

The body of literature on the fertility of migrants in Europe has grown significantly in recent decades. The focus has mostly been on analysing their actual behaviours, and reflection on other crucial aspects extensively analysed in studies on natives has been lacking. In particular, differences between migrants’ reproductive decision-making process and that of natives are currently understudied in the European context. We will focus on the association between demographic and socio-economic characteristics and fertility intentions, comparing native Italian and migrant women in Italy. We apply logistic regression models to analyse factors associated with strong intentions to have a child (or positive fertility intention) and strong intentions not to have a child (or negative fertility intention) in the short term. We use data from the Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens survey on households with at least one foreign member and from the Italian Gender and Generation Survey, both carried out at the national level by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). Net of controlled covariates, migrant women have both higher positive and lower negative fertility intentions within a 3-year time frame than native women do. However, the patterns of fertility intentions are different for natives and migrants as a function of age, educational level, marital status, parity, homeownership and, notably, labour market status. Focusing only on migrant women, we observe that fertility intentions vary by age at arrival and time since migration and that there are significant differences by country and geographical area of birth.