Immigration and Fertility in the United States

Abstract

Declines in immigrant fertility from one generation to the next provide an indirect measure of immigrant assimilation. Post-2000 declines in US fertility nevertheless may mask substantial—and growing—heterogeneity, especially across racial and ethnic minorities and new immigrant groups. We apply data from the June Current Population Survey to document generation-to-generation differentials in cohort completed fertility (CCF) since 2000 among America's racial and ethnic minority populations. Our regression decomposition models highlight composition and rate effects on changing levels of CCF nationally and across immigrant and native-born racial groups. CCF remained remarkably stable overall and for each racial group over the 2000-to-2020 period. The analyses nevertheless revealed small but unexpected increases in CCFs from 1.92 to 1.97 over 2000–2020. Growing diversity has, on balance, placed upward pressure on fertility. This has occurred even as fertility rates have declined overall among US racial minorities and immigrant groups since 2000. Trends in US cohort completed fertility reflect off-setting rate and composition effects across our set of explanatory variables. Any upward pressures on fertility from immigration or America's growing racial diversity has been countered by other downward pressures, especially from over-time increases in female education and declines in marriage. This paper documents recent fertility trends and differentials among different generations of racial and ethnic minority women over time. It highlights the importance of changing population composition, including the racial and generational mix of immigrants, for understanding post-2000 fertility trends. It provides an empirical baseline of fertility research in high-income countries.