Immigrant women residing in metropolitan France in 2019-2020 have fewer children. This is what emerges from the latest INSEE report entitled How many children do immigrant women have?, published on Tuesday. According to the Institute of Statistics, the number of childbirths per immigrant woman born between 1970 and 1974 is falling sharply, compared to that of women born outside French borders between 1950 and 1954: the former have an average of 2.27 children in their lifetime, compared to 2.94 for seconds.
In addition, according to the INSEE study, immigrant women, born between 1960 and 1974, have an average of 2.35 children, compared to 1.86 for women born at the same time in France without immigrant ancestry. direct (neither immigrants nor descendants of immigrants). “Immigrant women thus have 0.49 more children on average,” write the authors of the study.
A later first birth
For their part, women of immigrant descent, who have therefore not experienced migration, have an average of 1.90 children during their lifetime, ie a figure almost identical to that of women without direct immigrant ancestry.
Immigrant women also delay their first childbirth, which takes place around the age of 31 compared to just under 29 for all women. According to the authors of the study, “the decrease in completed fertility over the generations, as well as the increase in the average age at childbirth, go hand in hand with the socio-demographic characteristics of immigrants who have profoundly changed over the generations, in particular the increase in the level of qualifications, an evolution shared with non-immigrant women. »
De factoimmigrant women born between 1960 and 1974 without a diploma or with a diploma below the baccalaureate have an average of 2.55 children, while those with a higher education diploma have 1.75 children.
The authors of the study also note that the higher the level of education of women, the more the fertility gap between immigrant women and those without direct immigrant ancestry is reduced: 0.50 more children for those with no not the baccalaureate against only 0.13 for those with a level higher than the baccalaureate.