Childbearing among the descendants of immigrants in Germany

Turkish migrants and their descendants are the largest migrant group from a single origin country living in Germany. The German Mikrozensus as a large dataset allows us to distinguish between Turkish migrants who migrated as children (1.5 generation) and those who were born to Turkish parents in Germany (second generation migrants). We compare both groups to German non-migrants. Using event-history techniques, our results show that 1.5 generation migrants have the highest risk of first and second births, while German nonmigrants have the lowest birth risks. The second generation lies in-between. This pattern persists also after taking into consideration the educational attainment of respondents. However, there seems to be an adaptation for highly educated second generation Turkish migrants to non-migrant Germans: we find no significant differences in the first birth risks in the two groups. For second births, we do not find this pattern which might be related to the young age structure in the sample of second generation migrants.