Fertility in marriages between German men and marriage migrants

Abstract

First generation migrants from countries with high fertility usually have more children than the native population of receiving countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. But is this also true for marriage migrants, who migrate under very special circumstances? This paper investigates the fertility of marriages of German men and their marriage migrant spouses from poorer countries, using a database of 268 German-German couples and 461 couples made up of German men and women from Thailand, Brazil, Poland and Russia. The results show that marriage migrants' fertility is far below that of German-German couples. To a large part, this can be attributed to the partnership biography of husband and wife–especially when considering children from former relationships and a higher age at partnership formation. Bi-national marriages in which the husband is familiar with the wife's culture are more inclined to have children. If the husband speaks the wife's native language well and if he lived abroad prior to meeting his wife, childbirth is more probable than if he is ignorant of the wife's culture and always resided in his native country.