The role of migration on family formation trajectories Evidence from the United States Andrés Felipe Castro Torres 1 Ph.D. candidate in Demography & Sociology University of Pennsylvania 1 Introduction Understanding differences in demographic outcomes across migration status groups is a pressing demand for contemporary societies. Even if migration rates level off in the near future, current stocks of migrant populations will be of significant relevance in shaping contemporary societies. One overlooked dimension of migrant’s characteristics is their trajectories of family formation and dissolution. While the timing and level of family formation events–e.g. fertility rates and ages at first birth and marriage–have received considerable attention in the migration literature, the full trajectory of family formation and dissolution events among migrants has not been studied. Insofar as the family was a fundamental institution for modern societies during the 20th century and has remained as such in the run of the 21st, understanding its pat- terns of formation and dissolution is a key question for sociological research. More so when it comes to understand the connection between social stratification system, family formation pathways and how migrant populations are (or are not) affected by this con- nection. The patterns of household formation and childbearing are correlated with the structure of social stratification systems in a two-way relationships. Differential access to services, information and opportunities lead to divergent outcomes in the timing and prevalence of family formation and dissolution events. Moreover, these differences have been found to contribute sustaining socioeconomic difference across certain categories of people (McLanahan & Percheski 2008, McLanahan 2009, Greil et al. 2011). 1 Contact: candres@sas.upenn.edu 1
The family experienced fundamental changes during the second half of the 20th cen- tury within countries of the Americas (Furstenberg 2014). First, there has been an overall delay in the transitions to the first birth and the first marriage along with increases in the prevalence of cohabitation (Hayford et al. 2014, Pesando et al. 2016). Second, in- creasing marital instability has lead to larger variability in the unfolding of individual’s life-course after the first transitions (Cherlin 2005). Third, substantial differences be- tween socioeconomic status groups in the patterns and the timing of family formation have increased (Furstenberg 2008). All these changes interact with the diversification of migration streams to the US during the second half of the 20th century (Organization of American States 2011). This papers is an attempt to look jointly at these three processes by comparing the sequences of family formation/dissolution events of two ten-year birth cohorts of US-born and foreign born women; and their associations with socioeconomic characteristics. Differences across different migration status on fertility and marriage outcomes has been largely studied (Parrado 2015). Yet, few studies have looked at full trajectories of family formation and dissolution events. A family formation trajectory (FFT) is under- stood as the whole set of births, marriages and marriage dissolution that happen to woman during her life. Under this perspective the focus changes from the timing to first-events to life trajectories which seldom constitute the conceptual unit of analysis in demographic research (Billari 2001). This paper explores how migrants’ FFT differ from those of the native-born population in the US from three perspectives. First, it assess the overall level of heterogeneity in FFT over age across three populations: native-born women, foreign born women and foreign born women who arrived to the US after age fifteen. Second, it clusters FFT trajectories within each population to describe the patterns of childbearing and family formation in each group. Third, it compares the associations between socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and the clusters of FFT in the three populations. 2 Theoretical background The diversification of migration streams all over the world has translated into substantial heterogeneity in family and fertility outcomes among immigrant populations (Kulu & Milewski 2007, Kulu & Hannemann 2016). Racial, ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in the timing of childbearing are reinforced by these demographic dynamics in virtually all developed countries (Frejka & Sardon 2006, Sullivan 2005). Yet, no assessment of 2
the variability after the first transition (to parenthood and to partner-hood) has been conducted in a comparative way between migrant and non-migrants. Since the classical study of Goldberg (1953) on fertility and internal migration in the UK, several studies have tested competing hypothesis about the relationship between migration and fertility for different countries. These studies include the US (Parrado & Morgan 2008, Parrado 2011), Canada (Adserà & Ferrer 2014), Spain (Castro-Martín & Rosero-Bixby 2011), Italy (Mussino & Strozza 2012), France (Toulemon & Mazuy 2004), the United Kingdom (Dubuc 2012, Robards & Berrington 2015), Germany (Mayer & Riphahn 2000, Schmid & Kohls 2009, Milewski 2010), Sweden (Andersson 2004) and Es- tonia (Kulu 2005). Results are mixed in terms of the magnitude and the direction of the association between the migration experience and fertility; both aspects (magnitude and direction) are found to depend at least on the context of reception, the country of origin and the age at migration. Despite these mixed results, negative and positive correlations between migration and fertility seem to be the consequence of the tempo- ral disruption caused by the migration experience, i.e. the fundamental changes that happen to immigrant’s life-courses before, during and after migration. These changes include modifications of the fertility/marriage schedule due to the absence of the partner (Lindstrom & Saucedo 2002). Most of the research in this area focuses on the timing of the first birth/marriage or on age-specific fertility rates comparing foreign-born and native-born women. However, individuals’ lives include more than one event and the accumulation of these events is the basis of aggregate demographic dynamics such as complete fertility, marriage prevalence and marriage stability (Ryder 1965). The complete history of births, unions and disso- lutions constitutes an important unit of analysis in order to understand the connection between migration and fertility/family outcomes. As argued by Billari (2001) ’[...] by focusing on the time-to-event, researchers may miss a general overview of life-courses, thus failing to adopt a ’holistic’ perspective that sees life courses as one meaningful con- ceptual unit’ (p. 440). This is not to say that ’time-to-event’ approaches are inherently wrong, but to emphasize the complementarity of trajectory-based approaches as posited by Aisenbrey & Fasang (2010). Studying family/fertility outcomes among migrant populations has several method- ological challenges. They are mostly related with the difficulty of identifying a proper counter-factual for migrant women and with the bias associated with period indicators that do not account for the age at migration (Toulemon & Mazuy 2004, Parrado 2011). From a technical point of view, conditioning on migration to study subsequent events may 3
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