Early adopters and laggards among first and second generation Moroccans

Carel Harmsen, Statistics Netherlands
Tineke Fokkema, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
Han Nicolaas, Statistics Netherlands

The aim of this paper is to explore the regional differences in demographic behaviour between first and second generation Moroccans in the Netherlands. We will focus on age at marriage, age at first child, partner choice and number of children. Socio-economic variables and information on educational level is used as background variables. Special attention is given to the comparison between Moroccans originating from the large Moroccan cities and those from the RIF-region. We hypothesize that Moroccans born in the large cities are less traditional in a demographic sense then those from the RIF-region. In the past decade the number of second generation Moroccans in the Netherlands at a marriageable age has risen sharply. Just like the choice to live close to fellow countrymen the choice of a partner could very well be influenced by the fact that such a partner originates from the same region as the person itself. In this paper special attention is given to the factors which determine partner choice and age at marriage, and whether there is a difference by region of birth/origin. With respect to fertility there are big differences between first and second generation Moroccan women in the average number of children. Also the age at which the second generation Moroccan women become mothers for the first time has shifted well into the direction of native Dutch women. In this part of our paper differences in region of origin are taken into account. The analysis is based mainly on integral data derived from the Dutch municipal population registers in the Netherlands. The demographic variables are drawn from this sources, These data are combined with socio-economic variables and information on educational level, both extracted from the Social Statistical Database at Statistics Netherlands.