The Influence of Covid-19 Pandemic on Fertility Preferences of Turkish and Polish Migrants in Germany

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic is a serious multi-faceted crisis which showed its effects in various areas of life such as mental and physical health, economy, human rights, and security. These effects were felt all over the world since it was a global pandemic that reached everywhere on this planet if humans live there. Although the effects were felt throughout the world, each country and each subpopulation in a country felt these effects in their own unique way, some feeling the effects harsher than the others. In this thesis, the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the fertility preferences is studied to contribute to this area of research. The data obtained from German Family Panel (pairfam) study is used to make related descriptive and multivariate analyses to measure the effect of COVID-19 crisis in different groups of the population residing in Germany. To compare the effects of COVID-19 on different groups, two migrant population is selected: Turkish and Polish migrants. These populations were compared with German native population and with each other. Four research questions were answered through analyses: “What are the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on fertility preferences in Germany?”, “What are the effects of migration on COVID-19 outcomes on fertility preferences in Germany with a focus on Turkish and Polish migrant groups?”, “How did the factors affecting the fertility preferences, including migration status, change between before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany?”, “What factors, including migration status, were effective in changes of fertility ideals and intentions in Germany?”. The results showed that these different groups of migrants have, in some cases, along with different levels of parity and different sexes, experienced the effects of COVID-19 in different ways and different magnitudes. Although mean ideal number of children has not changed overall, a substantial increase occurred for 1st generation Turkish migrants, whose high fertility norm was prevalent in the logistic regression model for the post-COVID-19 period as well. Among the 2nd generation Turkish migrants, ideal fertility higher than 2 was also more likely compared to natives. For realistic birth intentions, share of respondents with positive intentions decreased among all groups except for 1st generation Polish migrants. Migration status was not significantly associated with abandonment of high norm fertility reflected in ideals. However, abandonment of birth intentions was less likely among the 2nd generation Turkish migrants. The results are interpreted through the lens of uncertainty and terror management hypotheses.