Fertility of nationals and foreigners in Spain, Italy, and Greece during and after the economic recession and refugee crisis

Abstract

This article provides an overview of trends in fertility of foreign and national women in Greece, Spain, and Italy during the last decade and before the Covid pandemic. It focuses on the fertility of foreigners and compares this with that of ‘nationals’. The main analysis focuses on a period marked, firstly, by the economic recession and stagnation, and then by the recent wave of the ‘refugee crisis’. Foreigner fertility in the three south Mediterranean countries differs significantly from that of nationals, with the former having higher fertility rates and lower mean age at childbearing. However, although foreigners make a large contribution to births, their impact on period fertility (total fertility rate or TFR) is limited. At the same time, although the fertility of both groups decreased during the first years of the recession, foreigner TFRs fell faster in both absolute and relative terms in Italy and Greece. However, after 2014, the foreigner period fertility among the three countries differs as a relative stabilisation is observed in Spain and Italy, while indicators rise in Greece. This divergence is due to the various composition changes in the settled after-2014 foreigners in the three countries and the strong recovery of foreigner births in Greece (as fertility in Greece was much more affected by the recession).