December 22, 2003
Globe and Mail Update
Foreign-born women are increasingly less inclined to have children the longer they live in Canada, a Statistics Canada study revealed Monday.
Data collected from the federal agency shows that immigrant women who arrived in Canada between 1996 to 2001 had a fertility rate of 3.1 children per woman.
But the study – part of the 2002 report on the demographic situation in Canada – shows that immigrant women's fertility rates soon start to resemble that of her Canadian counterpart. Immigrant women who arrived 10 to 14 years before 2001 had a rate of 1.5 children per woman, the same as a Canadian-born women.
The study noted that the tendency for the fertility rates to converge was most noticeable in women who had immigrated before they were 15 years old.
“Economic and social factors affect the behaviour of immigrant women they same way as they do Canadian women resulting in the low fertility rates,” Alain Bélanger, a Statscan spokesman, told globeandmail.com.
As well, Canadian-born daughters of immigrant women were also more likely to have low fertility rates. From 1996 to 2001, the total fertility rate for these women was 1.4 children per woman.
The finding means that if the Canadian fertility rate continues to decline or even hold stable at 1.5 children per woman, Canada “will have almost all of its population growth coming from immigration in 20 to 25 years from now,” said Mr. Belanger.
Currently, nearly one-fifth of the nation's population growth resulted from migration. Foreign-born people constitute 18.4 per cent of Canada's population, the highest proportion in 70 years.
During the 25-year period the study surveyed, fertility rates declined for Canadian-born women from 1.64 children per woman during 1976-1981 to 1.47 children during 1996-2001. The 10-per-cent decline is the same for immigrant women who went from 2.03 children per woman to 1.82. The study also found that the fastest decline occurred in women from southern Europe, whose fertility rates plunged 25 per cent from 2.17 in 1976-1981 to 1.62 children in 1996-2001.
Asian-born women were likely to have higher fertility rates than Canadian-born women. But, their fertility rates also declined from 2.54 children in 1976-1981 to 1.89 during 1996-2001.
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