Three essays on the fertility of minority groups

(eng) This thesis collects three essays on the fertility of minority groups. Chapter 1 is a theoretical contribution to the literature on fertility determinants. Indeed it suggests that individuals’ fertility decisions may be influenced by the size of the cultural group they belong to. Assume some interaction between individuals is required to produce output for instance and that expected outcomes of inter and intragroup matches differ, then intermediate size groups face a higher uncertainty than large majorities and small minorities, which are close to certain of the type of match they will get. Risk-averse parents wishing to secure the earnings of their cohorts of children would therefore decide to have more children in order to smooth out risk. Chapters 2 and 3 are empirical contributions to the literature on fertility norms. Chapter 2 shows that fertility norms, captured by the fertility rate in the country of origin of second-generation migrants to France, significantly increase the probability to have three children or more, but do not affect lower birth orders. This effect survives, though with a lower magnitude, the inclusion of controls for integration into the host country as well as religion. Chapter 3 studies the Black / White fertility gap in the US. It documents that, once controlled for education, other socioeconomic characteristics do not help to close the gap. It also shows that the gap is larger at low levels of education, while almost inexistent for highly educated individuals. Finally, fertility norms are found to significantly increase the fertility of least educated Black women, which makes it a consistent candidate to explain the remaining gap.