(Withdrawn) Fertility in Italy and Spain: the role played by foreigners

Raffaele Ferrara, University of Naples Federico II
Piero Giorgi, Università di Teramo
Marija Mamolo, Vienna Institute of Demography
Salvatore Strozza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II

We focus on the period fertility of immigrants in Italy and Spain, which have registered the lowest levels of the period total fertility rate (TFR) In 2007 in Spain foreigners accounted for almost 10% of total residents, in Italy slightly less than 7%. Simultaneously with the foreign population growth, both countries have also recorded a slight increase in total fertility. In the current research we first investigate the contribution of foreign women to the variation of TFR and late fertility, developing two decomposition models. Second, we aim to explore possible determinants of local differences in the contribution of foreign women to the variation of period fertility using multiple regression. The decomposition models show that the overall contribution of foreign women to the recovery of fertility in Italy is remarkable in the north of the country and only minor in the south. In Spain there seems to be a territorial gradient along the east-west axis. Regarding late fertility dynamics both in Italy and Spain foreign fertility slows down the in-crease of the proportion of fertility at age 30+. The effect is visible particularly under age 30 and in areas where late fertility is more pronounced, i.e. in northern Italy and north-eastern Spain where we no-ticed a decrease in %TFR30+. Further research will focus on some possible determinants of the regional variation in the contribution of foreign women to period fertility. We assume that characteristics of the foreign population and of the area of settlement may affect the contribution of foreign women to pe-riod fertility variation.