Comparing the fertility of Ghanaian migrants in Europe with nonmigrants in Ghana

The fertility behaviour of migrants is often studied by examining migrants and native nonmigrants in the country of destination. To understand the mechanisms for migrant fertility, it is important to know what distinguishes them from the population they originate from. The Ghanaian sample of the "Migrations between Africa and Europe" project allows us to contrast the fertility of those who never emigrated from Ghana and Ghanaian migrants who are residing in the UK or the Netherlands. First, we estimate discrete‐time hazard models of first birth to evaluate whether first birth timing is influenced by migration. Second, we apply Poisson regression techniques to examine differentials in completed fertility. We find that Ghanaian migrants postpone first childbirth compared with nonmigrants. Differences are largest at ages 20 to 24 for women and 20 to 29 for men. Ghana experiences a typical brain drain, which means that especially the highly skilled emigrate. In our sample, this is particularly true for women. Education seems to be an important determinant of the postponement of first childbirth in Ghana, although we cannot clearly attribute migrants' later first births to their higher level of education. However, our findings on completed fertility reveal that migrants have fewer children than nonmigrants and this difference diminishes considerably if we take into account their level of education. Apparently, migrants do not fully catch up after postponing first childbirth and end up with a lower number of children by the age of 40.