Better Health, Higher Fertility? Health Status as a Determinant of Fertility Intentions among Migrants in Italy

Giammarco Alderotti , Sapienza University of Rome
Eleonora Trappolini, Sapienza University of Rome

Research on the determinants of migrants’ fertility has always focused on socio-economic factors (education, employment, integration), producing incomplete and sometimes contradictory evidence. Alongside, the health status of migrants is at the top of many researchers’ agenda, since it is a good proxy of the integration process, and because of its implications on national healthcare systems. Despite health status and fertility are among the most important aspects of migrants’ lives in the destination country, the extent to which the first influence the second has hardly ever been considered. In this work, we posit that individual health status may in fact play a role in shaping fertility among migrant subpopulations, with different implications by gender, and test our assumption on Italian data. Preliminary results suggest that men’s good health is a precondition to have positive fertility intentions, while there is no significant association among women.

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 Presented in Session 118. Fertility of Migrants