Culture, gender, and context: Chinese immigrant fertility revisited

This doctoral dissertation studies the fertility behavior of Chinese immigrants in the United States using the Public-Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) data from the 2000 US Census. It finds that Chinese immigrants on average have fewer children than white Americans, which significantly distinguishes this group from most other immigrant or racial-ethnic minority groups, who tend to exhibit higher fertility rates than whites.;The research examines a number of previously unexplored factors that may affect Chinese immigrant fertility behavior. The first set of such factors consists of subcultural norms, which are indicated by different Chinese dialects including Cantonese and Mandarin. While Cantonese have a higher fertility rate than Mandarins in China, Cantonese immigrants continue to show significantly higher fertility than their Mandarin counterparts in the United States, even when many structural factors are controlled. Such findings suggest that the subcultural norms brought by Chinese immigrants survive in the United States and continue to affect their family and fertility behaviors, although immigration and assimilation factors also exert significant influence.