Transition to a first birth among Turkish second-generation migrants in Western Europe

This paper examines the fertility behavior of descendants of Turkish immigrants in Western Europe. We use data from the project The Integration of the European Second Generation (TIES), which was carried out in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Sweden in 2006-2008. Each country sample includes about 250 women who were born in these countries and who have one or two parents born in Turkey, as well as approximately 250 non-migrant women. The respondents were 18-35 years old. We apply event-history techniques to the transition to a first birth. Descendants of Turkish immigrants are found to have lower first-birth transition rates in Germany and in Switzerland than in Sweden, the Netherlands, and France. These differences cannot be explained in full by compositional differences of the Turkish second-generation. This supports the hypothesis that immigrant descendants adapt to the host society's fertility behavior. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.