Do rural-urban migrants have higher fertility than urban non-migrants in Vietnam?

Abstract

Large scale rural-urban migration has coincided with an apparent slow-down in Vietnam’s fertility decline. During the period 1999-2004, rural fertility continued to decline slowly while the urban fertility decline stalled. Some the government officials are concerned that rural-urban migrants, particularly temporary migrants, may have been having out-of-plan births which are not allowed under the two-child population policy. This study examines the relationship between rural-urban migration and fertility in Vietnam. The analyses consider a question: Do rural-urban migrants have higher fertility than urban non-migrants? The study used data obtained from the Vietnam Migration Survey conduced in 2004. The analyses applied multinominal logistic regression models to compare number of children aged 0-4 among various groups of migrants and non-migrations. The analyses found significantly lower fertility among migrants compared to non-migrants. Migrants appear to delay their fertility partly because of adaptation to the urban norm of lower fertility, but mainly because of household registration effects. The results suggest that increased rural-urban migration is not stalling the urban fertility decline as well as slowing down the national fertility decline. Rural-urban migration is likely to have a negative relationship with fertility.