Fertility differentials among immigrant women in Greece

Alexandra Tragaki, Harokopion University of Athens
Stamatis Kalogirou, Harokopio University of Athens

In recent years, Greece is experiencing a rapid increase in its population due to migrant inflows mainly from Eastern European, Asian and African countries. Though several studies have looked at the demography of immigrant population, the fertility differentials remain rather unexplored. This paper focuses on the spatial, temporal and nationality differentials of fertility among immigrant women living in Greece. Exploring the available data we attempt to identify temporal and spatial trends, and provide possible explanations for the various patterns. Analysis relies on official data provided by the National Statistics Service for the years 2004-2007, by region (NUTS II) and nationality. We employ exploratory data analysis methods including descriptive statistics and geostatistics. We then link the fertility data with key socio-economic, environmental and cultural variables. By studying the degree of correlation between the later variables and fertility we try to identify potential explanations for the spatial trends in the latter.