A comparison of short-term fertility intentions of Albanian women in Italy with non-migrants in Albania and Italian women

The central aim of this paper is to get a deeper understanding of short-term fertility intentions of native, migrant and non-migrant partnered women by testing for adaptation, socialization and selection theories while applying an origin-destination perspective. To find support for these hypotheses, data was drawn from several sources (FSS and SCIF for Italy, DHS for Albania), harmonized and merged into a unique dataset combining information on partnered women according to their migrant/non-migrant status. Binary regression models on positive fertility intentions, Average Marginal Effects, Adjusted Predictions for Prototypical Cases and multivariate non-linear decompositions are estimated to account for differences and/or similarities across groups of women. Results found that positive fertility intentions of Albanian migrant women resemble those of Italian women and are significantly lower than those of non-migrants, supporting adaptation theory. Findings also reported selection into migration, given that the gap in likelihood of being intended to have a child would be reduced if migrants were like non-migrants in terms of their educational attainment.