Projecting Fertility for the 1.5 Generation

Jennifer M. Ortman, U.S. Census Bureau
Sandra Colby, U.S. Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau will project fertility rates by nativity in 2014 to better account for the effects of international migration on future changes in the size and composition of the U.S. population. While taking differences in fertility by nativity into account is likely to yield improvements in our population projections, we suspect that it is not accurate to assume fertility rates of those who migrated to the United States as children are the same as those who arrive as adults. We devise two alternative series of projections, which assume that fertility rates of immigrants who arrive as children will be closer to those of native-born women than to foreign-born women who migrated as adults. We compare results of the two alternative series to our 2014 National Projections with a focus on the changes in the number and demographic characteristics of the projected births and population.