The Contribution of Mothers of Foreign Origin to Total Fertility: the Recent Recovery of Period Fertility in Flanders (Belgium)

Period total fertility has been recovering in Europe since the early 21st century and the role of immigration has been questioned in this regard. In this paper we aimed to study the extent to which mothers of foreign descent contributed to this recovery of period fertility in the Flemish Region of Belgium. Besides calculating fertility rates for different nationality groups, we furthermore proposed a method to indirectly assess the impact of births to foreign women on age-specific and total fertility in a context where this information is lacking. Results show first that fertility in the Flemish Region of Belgium is minimally affected by women of foreign nationality. Second, we find that period fertility would also have recovered if naturalized women would not have given birth. We conclude that the fertility recovery is mainly due to the increase of the fertility of women over 30 and reduced fertility postponement among native women.