Having the first child in Italy in a short-term period: the cohort of foreigners who immigrated in 2003

Eleonora Mussino, Università di Roma
Sabrina Prati, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Salvatore Strozza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

Since the last census in 2001 the number of foreigners in Italy increased rapidly. Today they represent almost 7.2% of the total population. With the rapid increase in the number increased also the amount of demographic events related to foreigners. The objective of this paper is to study the risk of have a first child in Italy for a cohort of foreign women who have arrived in Italy during the year 2003. The main novelty of this work is the use of stock and flow data from administrative registers to construct a longitudinal dataset that includes information on births and migrations in a determinate interval of years. The data used come from the Survey on Live Births of the resident population and from the residence permits of the Italian Ministry of the Interior. We use record linkage techniques to identify the same individual in the different sources and in the different years. We tested deterministic and probabilistic strategies in this paper. The results show that citizenship seems to be one of the most important factors to explain the high heterogeneity in the reproductive behaviors between the women. The risk to have the first child in Italy is higher for married women that come in Italy for family reunions. We also found that the possibility to stay in Italy for a longer period increases the chances to have the first child in the host country.