Why Immigrant Fertility in Norway Has Declined

Marianne Tønnessen, Statistics Norway

Declining fertility among immigrant women can be the result of successful integration, or it can be due to other reasons – such as an increased share of immigrant women from low fertility countries or lower fertility among newly immigrated women. This paper presents a way of isolating the effect of a changed composition of immigrant women from the effect of altered fertility patterns in each subgroup of women. The approach is used to examine possible reasons why the total fertility rate (TFR) of immigrant women in Norway fell from 2.64 in 2000 to 2.12 in 2012. The main reason why immigrant fertility in Norway has gone down is found among newly arrived immigrant women. They have a lower fertility now than the newly arrived had a decade ago. Changed composition of immigrant women with respect to area of origin and duration of stay explains almost nothing.