Collaborative Research: Understanding Migration and Fertility

这个项目调查的问题是，移徙妇女的生育率是否反映了期望的家庭规模较大，还是由于成本高、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着生育管制方面的巨大挑战。对于国际移徙妇女来说，情况可能尤其如此，她们往往缺乏医疗保健、社会网络和/或可能对生育监管重要的财政资源。在这项研究中，通过将国际移民与其原籍国具有相似背景特征但未移民的妇女进行比较，研究了移民与生育率、计划生育使用、生育偏好和调节生育率困难之间的联系。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。该项目采用倾向得分匹配的方法，将发送国和接收国的数据结合起来，探讨国际移徙与生育率之间的联系。迄今为止，大多数研究仅限于使用主要在接受国收集的数据来源，通常将移民与接受国的土生土长的居民进行比较，而不是与与他们有共同背景的原籍国居民进行比较。相比之下，我们的项目整合了两项调查的横断面数据，以创建一个新的数据集，以便将高度相似的受访者进行匹配，这些受访者已经和没有从发送国移徙到接受国。这使得：(1)通过将接受国的移民与输出国的类似非移民进行比较，调查国际移民与生育率之间的关联；以及(2)探索国际移民与潜在的生殖欲望和行为之间的关联，这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智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.