Collaborative Research: Understanding Migration and Fertility

该项目调查移民妇女的生育率是否反映了期望的家庭规模较大，还是由于费用高、缺乏服务知识和其他障碍而难以调节生育率。 社会上最脆弱的妇女往往面临生育调节方面的巨大挑战。 国际移民妇女尤其如此，她们往往缺乏保健服务、社交网络和/或对生育调节可能很重要的财政资源。 在这项研究中，移民和生育率之间的关联，计划生育的使用，生育偏好，以及调节生育的困难进行了调查，比较国际移民的妇女在其原籍国有类似的背景特征，但没有移民。 调查结果将扩大有关人口变化的知识，并有可能为减少意外结果的外联战略和公共卫生运动提供信息。该项目采用倾向分数匹配方法，将原籍国和接受国的数据结合起来，探讨国际移徙与生育率之间的关系。迄今为止，大多数研究仅限于使用主要在接收国收集的数据来源，通常将移徙者与接收国本土出生的居民进行比较，而不是与原籍国有共同背景的居民进行比较。相比之下，我们的项目整合了来自两项调查的横截面数据，创建了一个新的数据集，可以匹配从输出国移民到接收国的高度相似的受访者。这样可以：（1）通过比较接受国的移徙者和输出国类似的非移徙者，调查国际移徙与生育率之间的关系;以及（2）探索国际移民与潜在的生殖欲望和行为之间的联系，这可能有助于解释为什么移民与生育率有关。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

This project investigates the question of whether migrant women's fertility reflects high desired family sizes or difficulties regulating fertility due to high cost, lack of knowledge about services, and other obstacles. Society's most vulnerable women often face great challenges with fertility regulation. This may be particularly true of international migrant women who often lack healthcare access, social networks, and/or financial resources that might be important for fertility regulation. In this study, the association between migration and fertility, family planning use, fertility preferences, and difficulties regulating fertility is investigated by comparing international migrants to women in their countries of origin who have similar background characteristics but did not migrate. Findings will expand knowledge concerning population change and will have the potential to inform outreach strategies and public health campaigns that reduce unintended outcomes. This project explores the association between international migration and fertility by combining data from both sending and receiving countries using a propensity score matching approach. To date, most studies have been limited to the use of data sources collected primarily in receiving countries and have typically compared migrants to native-born residents of the receiving country, rather than to residents of their country of origin with whom they share a common background. In contrast, our project integrates cross-sectional data from two surveys to create a novel data set that allows for matching highly similar respondents who did and did not migrate from sending countries to a receiving country. This enables: (1) investigation of the association between international migration and fertility by comparing migrants in receiving countries to similar non-migrants in sending countries; and (2) exploration of the association between international migration and underlying reproductive desires and behaviors that could help explain why migration is associated with fertility.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.