Collaborative Research: Understanding Migration and Fertility

本项目调查的问题是，移民妇女的生育率是否反映了高期望的家庭规模，还是由于高成本、缺乏服务知识和其他障碍而导致调节生育率的困难。社会上最弱势的女性往往在生育调控方面面临巨大挑战。对于国际移徙妇女来说尤其如此，她们往往缺乏保健机会、社会网络和/或财政资源，而这些对生育调节可能很重要。在这项研究中，通过比较国际移徙者与原籍国具有相似背景特征但未移徙的妇女，调查了移徙与生育率、计划生育使用、生育偏好和调节生育率困难之间的关系。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后果的外联战略和公共卫生运动提供信息。本项目采用倾向得分匹配方法，结合原籍国和接收国的数据，探讨国际移民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受国收集的数据来源，并且通常将移徙者与接受国土生土长的居民进行比较，而不是与其原籍国的居民进行比较，因为他们有共同的背景。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，允许将高度相似的从派遣国迁移和未从派遣国迁移到接收国的受访者进行匹配。这使得：(1)通过比较接收国的移徙者与派遣国的类似非移徙者，来调查国际移徙与生育率之间的关系；(2)探索国际移民与潜在的生殖欲望和行为之间的关系，这可能有助于解释为什么移民与生育有关。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.