Fertility Outcomes among Temporary Mexican Migrants to the United States

Maria J. Perez-Patron, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

From a life-course perspective changing household demands such as marriage or childbirth are expected to have considerable influence in the timing and frequency of migration. Since migrants are more likely to undertake the trip during their main reproductive years it is expected that the migration experience will have an effect on family formation by competing with other life-course transitions. The present study will examine the association between U.S. migration experience and fertility by comparing completed fertility as well as age-specific fertility patterns among Mexicans with and without U.S. migration experience. The data used will be the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), a national representative sample of Mexicans 50 years and over living in Mexico in 2000. Fertility was modeled using count data models. Preliminary results confirm a disruptive effect of temporary migration on fertility. This effect, as hypothesized, is larger among migrant women than men