The Fertility of Second-Generation Political Immigrants in Taiwan

In contrast to the results in Mayer and Riphahn (2000) where no distinction is made between the causes of economic as well as political immigrants, this paper shows that compared to native Taiwanese, the parental refugee experience results in a lower com-pleted fertility of the children’s family partly through inducing a higher female labor force participation (FLFP) of the second-generation immigrant family. In addition, the likelihood of a wife participating in the market sector increases with the number of political immigrant parents and in-laws, supporting the psychological conjecture gen-erated from Borjas (1982) and Brenner and Kiefer (1981) in which completed fertility falls with the refugee experience shared with a couple’s parents and in-laws. A positive policy toward admitting more refugees is also considered