New immigrants to Canada are much more likely to have babies than their native-born counterparts.

Immigrant women who have spent five years in Canada “have almost twice as many children of pre-school age (as) the average Canadian-born woman,” according to an extensive study by two noted economists.

The University of Waterloo’s Ana Ferrer and Princeton University’s Alicia Adsera pored over two decades of Statistics Canada census data to reach their conclusion.

There are major birthrate differences depending on newcomers’ country of origin: The women who have the highest birthrates tend to be from Africa, Pakistan and India. The women who have the lowest birthrates tend to be from Europe, the U.S. and East Asia.

The study by Ferrer and Adsera -- which explores how childbirth rates affect a family’s “economic assimilation” and other aspects of integration -- is important for Canada and especially Metro Vancouver, where roughly 45 per cent of residents are immigrants, mostly from South Asia and East Asia.

The study aims to help governments and businesses respond to demographic changes in Canada, track the availability of workers of both genders and adjust taxpayer-support services.

While many Canadians welcome more babies, seeing them as future contributors to economic expansion, children can be expensive for both families and taxpayer, who pay for health care, child-tax subsidies and education through Grade 12.

The study goes into detail about the child-birth patterns of the roughly 125,000 women who arrive each year in Canada, which has the highest per-capita immigration rate of any major country.

“African and South Asian women show a substantially higher fraction of children under five than similar native-born women,” write Ferrer and Adsera. They note that women from the Middle East quickly start out having babies after arriving in Canada, but eventually slow down to closer to the national norm.

In contrast, there is a relatively low fertility rate among women who arrive from Europe, the U.S. and the countries of East Asia, such as China, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The authors speculate that women between ages 18 and 45 from European and East Asian countries may worry more about what economists call the “opportunity costs of children,” since having children often reduces chances to increase income.

The authors surmise that women from Europe, China and other East Asian countries could place a different value on the “two-earner family model” than those from India, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Even though the economists found variations in the birth rates of immigrant women based on their education, they say that “in the long run … both educated and uneducated immigrants have approximately 20 per cent higher fertility than their native-born reference groups.”

The findings of Ferrer and Adsera dovetail with earlier data from Statistics Canada, which showed that, based on ethnicity, the lowest fertility rates in Canada are among white, Chinese and South Korean women, all of whom fall below the national birthrate average of 1.6 babies per woman.

In addition, a 2006 Statistics Canada database that correlated birth rates with religion supports the two economists’ observation that birth rates tend to be higher among newcomers from South Asia, which is predominantly Hindu and Muslim as well as the home to a large Sikh population.

The earlier StatsCan survey showed that Muslim women in Canada have 2.4 babies per woman on average, Hindu women deliver 2.0 babies and Sikh women have 1.8 babies.

Christian women in Canada, meanwhile, give birth to an average of 1.5 children, roughly the same rate as women who have no religion. The least fertile women in the country, by religion, are Buddhists (who are most likely to have East Asian origins).

Why does these birth data matter to Canada? Ferrer and Adsera firmly maintain women’s birthrates have powerful effects on how well immigrant families integrate, economically and otherwise, into their new chosen country.

“The ability to forecast population growth, demand for public services or even labour supply increasingly requires considering immigrant fertility.”

dtodd@vancouversun.com

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