How does emigration affect fertility in the country of origin? We address this question by estimating counterfactual fertility during the Great Recession in order to understand what the effect of the recession on fertility would be in the absence of emigration. Between 2009 and 2014, Southern European countries suffered from harsh economic instability, which triggered a sharp drop in fertility and a spike in emigration. We focus on Italy, exploiting the richness of the Italian Administrative Registry of Italians Residing Abroad (AIRE), which records information about all Italian citizens moving their residence abroad, as well as Italian birth records. Using an instrumental variable approach, which helps overcome endogeneity issues in the fertility-migration relationship, we find a positive impact of emigration on the total fertility rate at the Italian province level. This result suggests that emigrants are selected among those individuals who have a lower risk of having children. Therefore, in the absence of emigration, counterfactual fertility would have been lower than it actually is. Such a positive effect of out-migration on fertility in the area of origin could thereby lead to an underestimation of the effect of the recession on fertility.

中文翻译：

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生育力流失还是生育力增加？意大利大衰退期间的移民和生育率。

移民如何影响原籍国的生育率？我们通过估计大衰退期间的反事实生育率来解决这个问题，以了解在没有移民的情况下经济衰退对生育率的影响。2009 年至 2014 年，南欧国家遭受严重的经济不稳定，导致生育率急剧下降和移民激增。我们专注于意大利，利用意大利海外意大利人行政登记处 (AIRE) 的丰富性，该登记处记录了所有意大利公民移居国外的信息，以及意大利的出生记录。使用工具变量方法，这有助于克服生育-迁移关系中的内生性问题，我们发现移民对意大利省一级的总生育率有积极影响。这一结果表明，移民是在生育子女风险较低的人群中被选中的。因此，在没有移民的情况下，反事实生育率会低于实际水平。因此，外迁对原籍地区生育率的这种积极影响可能导致低估经济衰退对生育率的影响。