Higher Perceived Infertility and Less Help Seeking Behavior among Immigrants in Germany

Nadja Milewski , Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), Germany
Jasmin Passet-Wittig , Federal Institute for Population Research, Germany
Martin Bujard , Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB)

This study examines whether the perception of infertility and help seeking behavior varies among immigrants and natives in Germany. Our working hypotheses are drawn from theoretical considerations on frameworks of migrant assimilation and stratified reproduction. The analysis is based on 12 waves of the German family panel pairfam; we apply pooled panel regression analyses. The sample includes in total 66,000 observations of more than 13,000 women and men aged 20-49 living in Germany. About 15 percent are immigrants. We found a double migrant disadvantage: First, the frequency of individual perception of infertility is significantly higher in all migrant groups compared to the majority group, especially for women. Second, their frequency of help seeking is lower than among natives. These disadvantages cannot be explained by socio-demographic or health variables. Rather, differences in knowledge about reproductive health and (in)fertility as well as access to reproductive health care may play a role here.

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 Presented in Session 67. Infertility and Reproductive Health