Female immigration and fertility behaviour in Italy

Eleonora Mussino, Università di Roma

According to recent estimations, the Italian Total Fertility Rate in 2007 was about 1.37 children per woman. If Italian and foreign women are considered separately, we find different values. The TFR was 1.28 for native Italians and 2.40 for foreign women. The migration process in Italy is characterized by two patterns: The first is a feminisation process; the second is an increase of family permits. In this scenario we want to analyze the different fertility contexts and typologies of immigrant mothers and to highlight the socio demographic characteristics that differentiate migrant and native-Italian mothers. The analysis will have a special focus on parity, the life cycle and occupation. For this study we use the Birth Sample Survey conducted in 2005 by ISTAT. After a short descriptive overview we perform multivariate factor and cluster analysis to find typologies of foreign mothers that can be discriminated by their socio-demographic characteristics.