Fertility and Adaptation: Indochinese Refugees in the United States

Fertility and Adaptation: Indochinese Refugees in the United StatesAuthor(s): Ruben G. Rumbaut and John R. WeeksSource: International Migration Review, Vol. 20, No. 2, Special Issue: Refugees: Issues andDirections (Summer, 1986), pp. 428-466Published by: The Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2546043Accessed: 05/04/2010 17:13

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Fertility and Adaptation:

Indochinese Refugees

in the

United States

Ruben G. Rumbaut, Principal Investigator/Director Indochinese Health & Adaptation Research Project1 San Diego State University

John R. Weeks, Administrative Director, International Population Center

San Diego State University

Levels of fertility among Indochinese refugees in the United States are

explored in the context of a highly compressed demographic transition

implicit in the move from high-fertility Southeast Asian societies to a

low-fertility resettlement region. A theoretical model is developed to

explain the effect on refugee fertility of social background charac?

teristics, migration history and patterns of adaptation to a different

economic and cultural environment controlling for marital history and length of residence in the U.S. Multiple regression techniques are

used to test the model which was found to account for nearly half of the

variation in refugee fertility levels in the United States. Fertility is

much higher for all Indochinese ethnic groups than it is for American

women; the number of children in refugee families is in turn a major determinant of welfare dependency. Adjustments for rates of natural increase indicate a total 1985 Indochinese population of over one

million, making it one of the largest Asian-origin populations in the United States. This remarkable phenomenon has occurred in less than

a decade. Implications of these findings for public policy are discussed,

focusing on family planning, maternal and child health needs, and the

attainment of refugee economic self-sufficiency.

The Indochinese exodus is one of the largest refugee movements in modern

history. Since the collapse in 1975 of U.S.-backed regimes in South Vietnam, Cambodia (now Kampuchea) and Laos, nearly two million refugees are known to have fled Indochina in search of asylum. Of these, 807,321 persons had been resettled in the United States as of September 30, 1985 (Gordon, 1985; ORR, 1985; ACNS, 1984). Two-thirds of this population are Vietnamese

1 This research was supported by Grant No. R01-HD15699 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

428 IMR Volume xx, No. 2

Indochinese Refugees in the United States 429

(including ethnic Chinese), followed by Cambodians (16%), lowland Lao

(12%) and Laotian hilltribes, mostly Hmong (7%). About 40 percent of the

refugees (over 300,000) have resettled in California; Texas is next among the 50 states with an Indochinese population of over 50,000. There are significant Indochinese concentrations in Washington, New York, Pennsylvania, Illi?

nois, Minnesota, Virginia, Massachusetts and Oregon, with smaller numbers scattered throughout each of the remaining states. These new migrant groups are socioeconomically as well as ethnoculturally diverse. Fewer than one in five of these refugees arrived in the U.S. during 1975-77 (the "first wave" of

immigration); most have arrived since 1980 (the peak year of a "second wave" of immigration which is still continuing). First-wave refugees were predo? minantly South Vietnamese urban residents and significantly more educated,

occupationally skilled and Westernized than the refugees who have arrived since 1978 (including the Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese "boat people", the survivors of the Pol Pot period in Kampuchea, and almost all of the Hmong), many of whom come from rural areas of Southeast Asia and most of whom have endured prolonged stays in refugee camps overseas prior to their resettlement in the United States.

In the process of adapting to the U.S. economy and society, one factor that has both advantages and disadvantages for the refugees is that they typically have large families. Extensive kinship networks founded on traditional values of filial piety provide the refugees with much-needed social and economic support as they attempt to cope with the extraordinarily stressful demands of their resettlement. On the other hand, the refugees' meager resources are further depleted by the need to provide for large families with many dependent children. This article explores the role of

fertility in the adaptation process, and aims to estimate the levels of fertility in the Indochinese refugee population in the United States, to explain the main determinants of refugee fertility, and to examine some significant implications of these findings for public policy.

Fertility rates in Southeast Asia are significantly higher than in the United States. For example, the Population Reference Bureau (1985) estimates the crude birth rate (CBR) in Vietnam to be 34 per 1,000, with a total fertility rate (TFR) of 4.7; in Laos the CBR is estimated at 41 per 1,000 with a TFR of

6.0; and in Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) the CBR is estimated at 32

per 1,000 with a TFR estimated to be 4.7. By comparison, the CBR in the United States is 16 per 1,000 and the TFR is 1.8. We should note that in the

mid-1970s, when the exodus of the refugees began in earnest, the fertility rates in the countries of origin were at least as high, or higher, than at the

present time. These averages conceal regional variations within each country, of course, especially the urban/rural differential. In Vietnam it has been estimated that completed family size in rural areas has been consistently 7-8 children (Fraser, 1980). Studies of Hmong highlanders in Thailand have

reported crude birth rates ranging from 49 to 76 per 1,000 (Geddes, 1976;

430 International Migration Review

Kunstadter, 1983,1984), and indeed Kunstadter has observed that the Hmong are "at the upper limits of human reproductive capacity" (1984:24). It is

clear, then, that the refugee population has come from a background of high

fertility. There is also evidence that countries of origin had relatively little

governmental commitment to family planning and that contraceptive utilization was probably quite low (Population Reference Bureau, 1976),

although since 1977 the government of Vietnam has been moderately

supportive of family planning (World Bank, 1984). The level of contraceptive utilization has probably been highest in Vietnam (Monnier, 1981), and the

urban Vietnamese, in particular, probably exhibit the lowest average levels of fertility in Southeast Asia (Jones, 1982).

Data from the refugee camps in Thailand are also suggestive of both the

relatively high levels of fertility and the cultural diversity in fertility patterns within the Indochinese population. Hoick and Cates (1982) found that in one

of two camps populated primarily by Khmer (Cambodian) refugees in 1979, the population was largely young adult with a balanced sex ratio and the

birth rate was very high (55 per 1,000). In a second camp in which the

proportion of young single women was high and the proportion of males was

fairly low, the birth rate was much lower, as would be expected. By 1981, the

average crude birth rate in all refugee camps in Thailand was 42 per 1,000

(Dewey, 1982). Among all Thai camps, those in which Cambodian refugees

predominate tend to have the highest crude birth rates (range = 46 to

64) ?rates which, if standardized, would probably be similar to those

prevailing in Cambodia prior to the fall of the Lon Nol government in 1975

(Meng-Try, 1981). Those camps in which the Hmong and Lao predominate have lower birth rates (range = 22 to 31), and those in which the Vietnamese

predominate tend to have the lowest levels (range = 21 to 25)(Dewey, 1982). These differences are at least partially explicable in terms of the different sex

ratios in the refugee camps. In Cambodian camps, for example, there were

nearly equal numbers of males and females, while the predominantly Vietnamese camps averaged more than twice as many men as women (Dewey, 1982). Consequently, age and sex standardized crude birth rates would

probably show high rates throughout the refugee camps. Because they come

from countries in which fertility is typically high and contraceptive utilization

is probably quite low, we can anticipate that fertility among Southeast Asian

refugees is well above the average for American women.

The main purpose in this article is to estimate the level of fertility among Indochinese refugees, and to place the fertility of the refugee population within the context of a highly compressed demographic transition implicit in the move from a high fertility homeland to a low fertility resettlement

region. The traditional explanation for the transition from high to low

fertility is that couples respond to economic development by trading quality in children for quantity of children (See, Weeks, 1986). Caldwell (1982) has

explained this phenomenon as representing a change in the direction in


which family income flows. In less developed societies children are economic

assets who contribute to their parents' well-being from early childhood until

the parents' death. A crucial change occurs in the process of economic

development, however, as a market economy replaces the family economy and the flow of income reverses ?parents now contributing to the child's

well-being from birth until the parents' death. Other researchers suggest that economic development is a sufficient but unnecessary cause of the

decline in a society's fertility. The important component of a fertility decline

is the change that occurs in the way that people view the world. In particular, it is argued that modernization, or more specifically, secularization, is causally linked to changing attitudes about family size (Lesthaeghe, 1977; Leasure,

1982). A key element in secularization is the growth in personal autonomy that leads people to believe that they have the ability to control their own

fertility (Coale, 1973). Indeed, this transformation of consciousness has been

characterized more broadly as a "movement from fate to choice"; that is, whereas the pre-modern individual tends to experience traditional social

life as a "world of fate", the modern individual in secular societies is confronted

with multiple options for both action and thought, such that every aspect of

life (including beliefs and values about sexuality, marriage and childbearing) becomes increasingly experienced as an "arena of choices" (Berger, 1979). Since this attitudinal shift invariably accompanies economic development, the latter is always associated with a decline in fertility, but a series of

regional demographic histories produced by the European Fertility History

Project at Princeton University suggest that secularization can occur and can

affect fertility even in the absence of widescale economic development. All of these influences on fertility are potentially observable within the

Indochinese refugee population. The refugees are going through the process of economic development in a very compressed time, with a speed the

equivalent of a time warp. In this process they are exposed clearly to the risk

that the traditional direction of income flow within the family will reverse

direction. Additionally, they are being exposed to Western, modern, secular

attitudes that are bound to have an impact on family size preference. Indochinese refugees in the United States are primarily from five different

broadly defined ethnic groups ?the Vietnamese, the ethnic Chinese (pri?

marily from Vietnam), the Khmer (people of Cambodian descent), the Lao

(the dominant ethnic group in Laos), and the Hmong (tribal highlanders from the northern mountain regions of Laos). Although all these ethnocul?

tural groups have shared a geographic region for centuries, their histories

have often been adversarial. Furthermore, there are distinct socioeconomic

and cultural differences among the groups that are likely to have influenced

past fertility patterns and, to the extent that people remain integrated into

the ethnic community, may also affect fertility (indeed, these differences

also influence the larger process of refugee adaptation to the American

economy and society).


CONCEPTUAL MODEL

While it is beyond the scope of this article to test all of the possible explanations of the demographic transition, it is our goal to use these perspectives on the

demographic transition to attempt to explain the levels of fertility that

currently prevail in the United States within the Indochinese refugee

population. Our conceptual framework links social background characteristics

in the homeland (including urban/rural residence and education) to the

migration history of the refugees (the only anomaly with respect to the usual

pattern of in situ fertility shifts) to patterns of adaptation to a different

economic and cultural environment, as predictors of fertility in the United

States. Marital history (including years married and the number of children

already born prior to coming to the United States) will independently influence the level of childbearing in the United States, and the number of

years in the U.S. will obviously influence the extent to which adaptation has

occurred. These relationships are shown in Figure I.

FIGURE I

Conceptual Model

MARITAL HISTORY

SOCIAL BACKGROUND

YEARS IN THE U.S

\ ECONOMIC /'ADAPTATION

MIGRATION HISTORY

v^J CULTURAL W / ADAPTATION

.FERTILITY /OUTCOME

Sociodemographic Background

The Vietnamese have a patriarchal, patrilineal, patrilocal extended kin

system, with polygamy being practiced fairly commonly until the 1960s

(Haines, 1982; Van Deusen etal, 1981). The age at marriage appears to have been later than in other Southeast Asian cultures (18-25 for women) ?a fairly recent phenomenon (Crawford, 1966) that may help to account for the widely accepted perception (in the absence of much hard data) that fertility levels are lowest among the Vietnamese. There is no prescribed postpartum taboo on intercourse, and the usual period of breastfeeding prior to weaning appears to have been about two years (Van Deusen et al, 1981). Furthermore,


the Vietnamese have been sufficiently westernized over time that dating has

been permitted in urban areas. The Vietnamese are more urban than most of

the other groups, and educational levels accordingly tend to be somewhat

higher. The ethnic Chinese from Vietnam, who have played an important

"middleman minority" economic role in the history of Vietnam, are estimated

to have represented a substantial fraction of the population that fled Vietnam

(Fraser, 1980). Like the Vietnamese, the social organization of the ethnic

Chinese is basically patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal. Also in common

with the Vietnamese, the family is the most powerful social unit, and the

status of women is clearly inferior to that of men (Schrock et al, 1966).

Further, like the Vietnamese, the ethnic Chinese are predominantly urban

and more educated relative to other Indochinese groups. In contrast to the Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese, the Khmer culture is

characterized by a nuclear, neolocal family system, with a typically young

age at marriage (16 is not uncommon) (Van Deusen et al, 1981; Khoa, 1981). The position of women has traditionally been stronger than among the

Vietnamese, and women are traditionally the controllers of the family budget in Khmer households (Schrock, et al, 1966). After the birth of a child there is

typically a period of 1-12 weeks of postpartum isolation from the husband

and children are usually weaned at about age three. The Khmer are typically rural in origin with consequent low levels of education.

The Lao are also organized around a nuclear family form although it is

usually matrilocal (as is actually often true among the Khmer for financial

reasons). Age at marriage is young (16-22), and a one-month postpartum period of isolation is usual, with weaning occurring after about two years (Van Deusen et al, 1981). The Hmong of northern Laos differ in important

respects from Laotians. The basic form of social organization is an extended

clan system that is patriarchal, patrilocal, and patrilineal, but sharing of

responsibilities by all family members is usual (Schrock etal, 1966; Dunnigan, 1982). Polygamy is still occasionally practiced; indeed, polygamy has ensured

that marriage is virtually universal for Hmong women throughout their

reproductive years even in small villages where the sex ratio is unbalanced

during marriageable ages (Kunstadter, 1983, 1984; Vang, 1982). For the

Hmong, age at marriage is youngest of all the ethnic groups (13-18), and

premarital intercourse and pregnancy are not normally punished. The birth

of a child is followed by a three-week period of postpartum abstinence, and

weaning typically occurs about a year and a half after birth (Chindarsi, 1976). The Hmong are almost universally from remote mountainous rural areas, and illiteracy in their native language (for which no alphabet existed until

after WWII) has been the norm among this group of Indochinese.

In general, then, although the family holds central importance for each

of these groups, the specific character of their family and traditions is

variable. Thus, whereas the Vietnamese and Chinese family system favors


the extended family, the Hmong possess a clan system and the Lao and

Khmer emphasize nuclear ties. Average ages at marriage vary among the

groups, as do postpartum taboos and lactation periods. These cultural

differences may well have influenced past fertility levels and, to the extent

that they are transplanted to American society, may also influence current

and future levels of childbearing.

Migration History

The process of flight and the (often traumatic) nature of refugee migration

may variously affect fertility-regulating behavior. For both the current and

emerging population of adults in the Indochinese refugee population, the

scars of the flight from Asia are bound to heal only slowly. It is apparent from

most work on refugees, moreover, that the timing of flight affects how

penetrating its impact will be. In a summary of social theories of the refugee

experience, Stein (1981) suggests that anticipatory flight is somewhat similar

to voluntary migration (except that it involves a "push" not a "pull"), and

usually involves the better educated and economically well-to-do. Acute

flight at a time of crisis, however, can cause severe problems of adjustment because of the haste in which the move was made. Furthermore, in the case of

Indochinese refugees, acute-flight refugees were far more likely than others

to wind up in refugee camps prior to their entry into the United States and

that, too, has often been a brutalizing experience. As political refugees

escaping persecution, many Southeast Asians have experienced extreme

hardships, trauma and tragedy, including separation from and loss of family members (Huyck and Fields, 1981; Rumbaut, 1985).

Two fertility-related phenomena may be taking place in reaction to these

experiences; one we shall call "catching up", the other "rebuilding". Although

fertility levels are generally high in the refugee camps, some women may have been forced or may have elected to postpone childbearing during their

stay in or escape from the refugee camps. Similarly, many families have lost

one or more members. Certain cultural and psychological factors that help them cope with their loss make it probable that high fertility rates will result.

For example, the Buddhist belief in the cycle of life, including reincarnation,

encourages people to have children. The dependency of deceased ancestors

on the living for honor and sustenance in the spirit world requires future

generations of relatives. The survival of the family and of the people as a

whole requires the individual survivors to rebuild by reproduction. Con?

fucianism and its stress on filial piety and the maintenance of the family heritage also encourages family-building. Cambodians, in particular, are

likely to have experienced heavy loss of family members (Meng-Try, 1981; Ima et al, 1983), and may thus be influenced by the desire to rebuild the

family by bearing children (Ellis, 1982). Children, moreover, provide the


older refugees ?who, having lost home and homeland, often harbor little little hope for their own generation ?with their deepest source of present life

satisfaction and their best hopes for the future (Rumbaut, 1985).

Economic Adaptation

We have already mentioned that the timing of migration is related to the

socioeconomic status of migrants at the place of origin. Clearly, status at

origin will affect status or potential status in the United States. More

importantly, status in the United States will influence the speed and extent

of adaptation to the new economic environment. Learning English, getting a

job, earning an adequate income and owning a car so that geographic

mobility and independence can be enhanced are all factors that are bound to

be an influence on the processes of personal economic development and

secularization, leading to a new view about preferred family size. There is at

least anecdotal evidence that education is highly valued among some of the

Indochinese ethnic groups, especially the Vietnamese. Over time such a

phenomenon should have the effect of raising the age of marriage and

substantially delaying the birth of the first child (McDonald and Rindfuss,

1981; Rindfuss, Bumpass and St.John, 1980; Rhodes and Woodrum, 1980; Rindfuss and St. John, 1983). Education is also a source of family breakup, to

a certain extent, because it prepares people for non-family market labor (cf.

Jain. 1981). It is also part of the process of individual modernization. As

Caldwell (1981) has commented, "the study of fertility transition is the study of the transition of familial production into production through the labor

market, of traditional society into modern society" (p. 27).

It may be reasonable to assume that males will be the initial entrants into

the American labor force, and that the family's economic adaptation will be

heavily dependent upon the behavior of the male. Over time, however,

fertility is likely to be especially influenced by the labor force participation of women, especially that which clearly lifts her above the level in the labor

market that allows easy entrance and exit. In relatively unskilled work

requiring little education or training, a woman's employment need not have

a depressive effect on fertility because she can leave and reenter the labor

market freely so long as child care is available (Gurak and Kritz, 1982). The

principal adjustment that such mothers must make to their employment is to

substantially reduce the length of breastfeeding (Ward, Pridmore and Cox,

1981; Hollingsworth, Brown and Brooten, 1980). Only if the occupational demands of the wife are substantial enough to prevent easy movement into

and out of the labor force would we expect to notice an influence on fertility, at least in the short run. In the long run, it may be that work of any kind,

especially if the employer is a non-relative, may lead to greater levels of

economic integration into the dominant culture and thus to downward

pressure on fertility.


Cultural Adaptation

When the sociocultural context of the refugee's life changes radically as a

consequence of resettlement in the United States, the framework of individual

decision-making is restructured, often having an influence on family-building

activity (Tabah, 1980; McNicoll, 1980). Particularly important in this regard is the extent to which a person is integrated (or is in the process of integrating) into the dominant culture. Language facility, networks of friends, reference

group identification, and acceptance of some of the symbols of the dominant

culture such as food and music are indicators of subtle, but important influences on a person's daily life, and there is increasing evidence that

present social circumstances are more important in determining fertility than has previously been thought (Smith, 1981; Janssen and Hauser, 1981).

Indochinese refugees find themselves in a bicultural setting with com?

peting demands and pressures. Their strategy for coping with these aspects of their life will likely have an important bearing on their decisions about

reproduction. Migrants may choose to integrate themselves into the local

ethnic community, in which case sociocultural background characteristics

may continue to affect role relationships and behavior, with the potential for

pronatalist pressures to be exerted. Or, they may choose to become more

integrated into the dominant culture, in which case new role relationships

may emerge with the potential for downward pressure on fertility.

Particularly important in maintaining strong ties to the traditional culture

is residence within an extended kin network (Davis, 1948). This theme has

existed for decades in the literature (Burch and Gendell, 1971), and in a

study of fertility in Sierra Leone it has recently been concluded that "the

prevalence of the extended family system is found to increase the demand

for children" (Ketkar, 1979:487). The presence of other relatives, especially older ones, increases the pressures to maintain traditional roles and to

strengthen ties through reproduction.. This may have the same effect in

other cultures as has been observed in Puerto Rico: "Status differences

between husband and wife, the taboos on discussion of sex, and the modesty of women in general combine to make many Puerto Ricans reticent when

facing problems of goal-setting with respect to family size, of mutuality in sex

relations, of seeking the means for fertility control and of putting these

means to work" (Hill et al, 1959:62-63). The obverse of this is that neolocal

nuclear families may be those in which the status and roles of women will

adapt most quickly to American norms and values. We should note, however, that the process of migration tends, in and of itself, to undermine the

existence of the extended family. We might expect, then, that those individuals who identify with their

cultural heritage will demonstrate behavior patterns that reflect that culture.

If having many children is the "Khmer" or "Hmong" way, then the more

"Khmer" or "Hmong" a woman is, the more children she might have.


However, the exact nature of the relationship between cultural adaptation and fertility is still muddy (Scrimshaw, 1975). It is likely that this is because

adaptation has both cultural and structural aspects (Frisbie and Bean, 1978). Some aspects of behavior are deeply ingrained in cultural values and

traditions and are unlikely to change in one or even two generations, whereas other aspects of behavior are a function of a group's status in society and if social mobility occurs then behavioral changes will follow suit (Beaujot, Krotki, and Krishan, 1982; Bean and Swicegood, 1982). The uncertainty about fertility and adaptation is evident in the literature. Day (1984) has used

census data from Australia to suggest that the decline of fertility among ethnic immigrant groups may be due less to assimilation into a new culture

than to 1) a mirroring of fertility trends in the country of origin (with which

immigrants may stay in contact and thus be influenced in their behavior); 2) the striving to take advantage of opportunities for economic and social

advancement; and 3) more information about and greater access to birth

control. Other data from Australia (Carlson, 1985) suggest further that, whatever the disruptive effect of migration on marriage and childbearing, the impact is short-term. Thus, long-term shifts in fertility may be seen as a

reaction to processes that transcend the migration experience itself, such as

adaptation (See, e.g., Lee and Farber's [1984] discussion of rural-urban

migration in Korea) or the factors identified by Day, as discussed above.

The ability of Asian immigrant populations to limit fertility has been

amply illustrated in Canada. Basavarajappa and Halli (1984) have used

indirectly age-standardized general fertility rates to show that in 1926-1931

the Chinese and Japanese immigrants to Canada had fertility rates that were

97 and 65 percent above the Canadian average, respectively. By 1946-1951, the Japanese-Canadians had already dropped below the Canadian average, and by 1966-1971 the fertility of the Chinese ethnic group was only 9 percent above the national average. In both cases, the decline of fertility in a new

setting was, in fact, occurring at the same time the high fertility was yielding to lower levels in the countries of origin.

Although immigrants may not assimilate into the new culture, they must,

nevertheless, cope with a new social and economic environment, and it is

worth noting that previous research suggests that, in a bicultural setting,

fluency in the dominant language is one of the most predictive indicators of

both economic and cultural adaptation, since it is the key to learning the

norms and expectations of the dominant cultural group (Cuellar and Weeks,

1980). Ability in English has been found, in particular, to be associated with

lower fertility among Puerto Rican migrants to New York (Rindfuss, 1976).

SAMPLE

Data for this analysis are drawn primarily from the first (Tl) of two sets of

interviews conducted by the Indochinese Health & Adaptation Research


Project (IHARP) at the University of California, San Diego (now relocated

to San Diego State University). Since its inception in 1982, IHARP has

entailed a comprehensive three-year longitudinal study of the migration and resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees, based on interviews with

randomly selected samples of adult men and women of the Hmong, Khmer,

Lao, Chinese-Vietnamese, and Vietnamese communities of San Diego

County. The sampling process began with a systematic enumeration of the

Indochinese refugee population in San Diego County, which we found to

number nearly 40,000 persons as of April 1983. This enumeration was

stratified by the five major ethnic groupings, and, using heads of household

as the unit of selection, a random sample of householders and their spouses was drawn from within each ethnic group, producing a sample of 739 adults

(366 men, 373 women) residing in 437 households. Complete household

listings were obtained for each household, yielding basic demographic information on a total of 3,003 persons. This latter set of data was used for

this calculation of child-woman ratios, discussed in the next section.

Structured Tl interviews (with many open-ended questions) lasting an

average of nearly three hours were conducted during 1983 with the 739 adult

respondents, and were repeated a year later in 1984 (T2) for all but the Lao

sample. Interviews were conducted by skilled, extensively trained, indigenous interviewers in the home and language of the respondent. The refusal rate

was 6 percent (lower for the Hmong, Lao and Khmer, higher for the Chinese

and Vietnamese). Respondents were selected if they were between the ages of

25 and 65, and their spouses were included even if they were under 25 or over

65. The age limitation makes our data somewhat conservative with respect to

fertility behavior, since it effectively reduces the influence on our results of

those younger members of a group whose reproductive behavior does not

span both the homeland and the new area of resettlement. Still, given that

wives were nearly always younger than their husbands, the sample yielded a

total of 38 women under age 25. For our analysis of fertility and adaptation, most of the data reported in this paper are drawn from the 313 interviews

conducted with women of childbearing age (between the ages of 18 and 49 at

Tl, and under 45 years of age at arrival in the U.S.), including 63 Hmong, 54

Khmer, 61 Lao, 53 Chinese-Vietnamese, and 82 Vietnamese. Of these 313

women, 86.9 percent were married at Tl, 5.4 percent were single (signifi?

cantly, no Hmong women were single), 2.9 percent were divorced or separated

(mostly the Lao), and 4.8 percent were widowed (mostly the Khmer, who

evidence by far the greatest degree of family disorganization as a result of

post-1975 events in Kampuchea).

FINDINGS

Descriptive data for the adult sample (N=739) are shown in Table 1. It is

particularly noteworthy that the majority of respondents are second-wave


refugees, as are the majority of Indochinese refugees nationally. Little has

heretofore been known about this group. In comparison with the first-wave

migrants (N=115), those in the second wave (N=624) are significantly (p < .001) more rural in background, less educated, less fluent in English, live in

larger households with fewer employed family members, have higher rates

of poverty and welfare dependency, earn much less income from jobs, and

have higher levels of fertility. This latter fact, in particular, leads to a very

young age structure among second-wave refugees, especially among the

Hmong, who, as we will discuss, have by far the highest level of fertility. Since the majority of the refugees are part of the second wave, the char?

acteristics of this group tend to dominate the overall statistics.

Data from the total household sample (N=3,003) show that 43.8 percent of the Indochinese population consists of children under age 15; the median

age of this population is 18 (and for the Hmong, the median age is 12.7), much younger than the median age of 31 for the U.S. population. These

demographic differences are illustrated in Figure 2, which presents age-sex

pyramids for the San Diego Indochinese population and for the general San

Diego County population (the latter based on 1980 Census data). The older,

constrictive age structure of the San Diego population stands in sharp contrast to the young, expansive profile of the Indochinese population ? a

contrast typical of the respective population patterns of affluent countries

and developing regions. The youthful age structure of the Indochinese

population, combined with current high levels of fertility, suggests, of

course, a substantial rate of natural increase for a considerable length of time

in the future?a pattern which, although essentially similar to that of a less

developed nation, carries with it the added twist of exposure to the risk of

adaptation to a new environment in which low fertility rates prevails.

Fertility Levels

Our findings reveal that fertility is substantially higher in each of the

Indochinese communities than in the U.S. population. In the United States

in 1980, the child-woman ratio (CWR) was 309 children aged 0-4 per 1,000 women aged 15-44. By comparison, our household sample of 635 Indochinese

women aged 15-44 produced a CWR of 824. As can be seen in Table 2, the

child-woman ratios were lowest for the ethnic Chinese-Vietnamese (511), followed by the Lao (553) and Vietnamese (574). The Khmer had a higher ratio (816), while the Hmong evidenced an exceptionally high level of

fertility (1,769). We calculated age-standardized rates (using the indirect

method, based on age-specific fertility rates for the U.S. in 1980), and found

that age structure accounted for only a negligible proportion of the differences

in fertility.

4^ O

TABLE 1

Characteristics of the Indochinese Refugee Population, by Ethnic Group and Immigration Waves*

IHARP 1983 Adult Sample, N=73g (366 men, 373 women)

ETHNIC GROUP IMMIGRATION WAVE

CHARACTERISTICS (Means or Percents)

Hmong Khmer Lao Chinese Vietnamese

(N=144) (N=124) (N=139) (N=131) (N=201)

1st WAVE: 2nd WAVE: Pre-1978 Post-1978 (N=115) (N=624)

TIME AND AGE:

Months in Refugee Camps 34.3

Years in the U.S. 3.6

Age at Tl (1983) 37.0

SOCIAL BACKGROUND:

% Urban 8.3

% Writing Illiteracy 70.8

Years of Education 1.6

ENGLISH PROFICIENCY (Tl):

% Cannot Speak English 34.0

% Cannot Read English 54.2

% Cannot Write English 73.6

EMPLOYMENT STATUS (Tl)

Never Employed in U.S. 71.5

% Homemakers in Sample 49.6

% Time Employed in U.S. 11.4

25.5

2.8

35.6

46.3

34.2

5.0

54.5

55.3

61.7

69.9

42.3

12.2

23.0

3.6

39.2

79.1

26.6

4.9

46.8

48.9

55.7

71.2

25.2

11.9

10.3

3.6

41.8

95.4

17.6

6.7

54.9

58.9

61.8

60.3

33.6

18.2

7.8

4.1

35.9

94.0

1.0

9.8

24.9

25.4

30.8

42.3

26.9

27.8

6.6

7.1

37.8

88.9

7.8

9.5

13.9

15.7

27.0

4.2

19.7

66.7

19.1

3.0

37.3

71.9

23.5

6.3

42.9

46.9

53.0

50.9

36.4

20.6

z s r> X z M M

z H K M

o

H

TABLE 1 (continued) Characteristics of the Indochinese Refugee Population, by Ethnic Group and Immigration Waves*

IHARP 1983 Adult Sample, N=739 (366 men, 373 women)

ETHNIC GROUP IMMIGRATION WAVE

CHARACTERISTICS (Means or Percents)

Hmong Khmer Lao Chinese Vietnamese

(N=144) (N=124) (N=139) (N=131) (N=201)

1st WAVE: 2nd WAVE: Pre-1978 Post-1978 (N=115) (N=624)

Wage-Earners in Family** 0.38

% Both Spouses Working** 5.1

% Welfare Dependent** 65.0

FAMILY INCOME (Tl):

Annual Family Job Income** $2,231

Annual Welfare Income** 6,242

Total Annual Income** 8,485

Per Capita Income** 1,529

% Below Poverty Line** 93.8

% Owns Car** 27.5

Household Size** 8.7

0.41

4.9

69.2

$3,046

4,666

7,849

2,881

80.8

37.0

8.3

0.38

9.4

69.5

$2,925

5,721

8,717

2,447

82.4

51.8

6.3

0.49

9.6

57.5

$4,143

4,533

8,582

2,276

76.7

58.9

5.8

0.73

17.4

40.5

$7,294

4,155

11,522

3,881

57.0

69.4

5.5

1.12

33.1

15.3

$15,378

2,116

17,500

5,362

33.7

93.5

6.0

0.42

7.2

63.4

$ 2,643

5,409

8,113

2,498

80.0

45.0

6.5

* All differences between groups are significant at p < .001 for all variables listed, except Age of Respondent, which is not significantly differ? ent between immigration waves. Totals for immigration waves are weighted to reflect the actual proportion of each ethnic group in the total Indochinese population of San Diego County. ** Data are reported by family, not by individual (N=437 households, including 70 female heads of household).

SOURCE: Indochinese Health & Adaptation Research Project (IHARP), San Diego State University.


FIGURE II

Age-Sex Structures: San Diego County Population (1980 Census, N ?*? 1,862,126) VS. Indochinese

Population (IHARP 1983 Household Sample, N ?*? 3,003)*

SAN DIEGO COUNTY TOTAL

75+ 70-74 65-69 60-64 55-59 50-54 45-49 40-44 35-39 30-34 25-29 20-24 15-19 10-14 5- 9 0- 4

MALES LL2Z

?X rm

[4^r AJL 4.4

14.0 WA

jn JE

1477

15

110.5

10

\hr VTJT

^

533

El

4.6

FEMALES

5,01 , 6.1 I

PERCENT

-Hhn

8.7 ITT 6.6 xa

10 15

TOTAL INDOCHINESE

75+ 70-74 65-69 60-64 55-59 50-54 45-49 40-44 35-39 30-34 25-29 20-24 15-19 10-14 5- 9 0- 4

MALES

Trf Er

no~ I 11.0

?Er 113.9

0.4 0.3

1.3 r ?6

M

j?z

JSjl 3.6

QX

TO^

11.2 TV2l

331

fi.

FEMALES

TT Ttt

"ZTT 11.5

13X1 CT

J5JD

15 10 0 PERCEOT

10 15

* Data for the Indochinese populationi s weighted to reflect the actual proportion of each ethnic group (Hmong, Khmer, Lao, Chinese-Vietnamese and Vietnamese) in the total Indochinese population of San Die to County. The asymmetry among males aged 18 to 29 in the general San Diego County population reflects the influence of U.S. Navy and Marine ases in the area. The gap in the 20-24 age group among the Indochinese (especially among males) may be due to migration selection, wartime mortalirty and/or conscription in the countries of origin, sampling procedures, or a combination of all of these factors. The gap is present in the age-sex structures of each of the five major Indochinese ethnic groups. SOURCE: Indochinese Health Adaptation Research Project (IHARP), San Diego State


TABLE 2

Child-Woman Ratios (CWR) by Ethnic Groups, San Diego County Indochinese Refugee Population (IHARP 1983 Household Sample N = 3,003)

Vietna- Age Groups Hmong Khmer Lao Chinese mese

(N=651) (N=693) (N=517) (N=430) (N=642) TOTAL

(N=2,933)

Total Children: 0 to 4 Years 184 142 68 48 78

(28.3%) (20.5%) (13.2%) (11.2%) (12.1%) 520

(17.7%)

Women: 15 to 19

20 to 24

25 to 29

30 to 34

35 to 39

40 to 44

Total: 15 to 44

24

20

25

11

16

_8 104

42

29

42

25

14

22

174

35

21

27

18

8

14

123

23

4

23

20

9

15

94

33

27

21

28

19

12

140

157

101

138

102

66

71

635

Child-Woman Ratios:

1,769 816 553 511 574 824

* CWR = (Total Children 0 to 4 Years)/(Total Women of Childbearing Age, 15 to 44) x 1,000

Data from the 1980 Census suggest a CWR of 386 for the Vietnamese (in? cluding Chinese-Vietnamese) population in the United States as of April 1, 1980. This is a figure well below the number derived for our Vietnamese

samples. The difference is explained principally by the fact that the Viet? namese who were enumerated in the United States early in 1980 were first-wave immigrants. They tended to be highly educated, from high status urban backgrounds, and thus typically prone to low fertility. Closer ex? amination of geographic pattern (by state) of child-woman ratios for the Vietnamese population revealed lowest fertility in those states in which Vietnamese had settled earliest (including especially Washington, D.C./

Virginia and California) and highest fertility levels among Vietnamese in those states that were resettlement sites for the earliest of the second-wave

immigrants (including especially Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, and Utah). In San Diego, the child-woman ratio for Vietnamese in 1980 (377) was also above the average for the total American population but still well below the level found in our data since the majority of the refugees arrived in San Diego after the census enumeration. Not unexpectedly, the child-woman ratios for the Indochinese refugees in San Diego are comparable to high- fertility Third World nations. In 1980, Thailand had an estimated CWR of


683, while the rate for the Philippines was 637, and for Pakistan it was 888

(U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1979). A second measure of fertility provided by our data is the total number of

children ever born by age, shown in Table 3. The number of children ever

born to women 45-49, which may be taken as completed family size, confirm

the fact that the Hmong have the highest fertility level among the refugee

groups (8.63) followed by the Khmer (5.50), then the Chinese (5.29), the Lao

(5.25) and the Vietnamese (4.63). The total for all Indochinese women 45-49 in

Table 3 (5.26) is weighted to reflect the actual proportions of the various

ethnic groups in the total U.S. Indochinese population. In fact, the Hmong have extremely high fertility (our data practically replicating the findings of

Kunstadter [1984] concerning non-refugee Hmong in northern Thailand), while all of the other groups exhibit completed fertility which is only slightly

higher than that prevailing in the Southeast Asian region of origin where the

regional average fertility rate in 1985 was 4.5).

Using data on children born during the year prior to Tl and during the

T1-T2 interval, we have calculated the average number of children born

during the previous year at Tl and T2. We averaged the two time periods because the sample size was small enough that we felt that the average of two

dates would yield a more reliable estimate of current fertility. Furthermore, since the T1-T2 interval was just under a year, we did not feel that differences

in current fertility between the two dates could be interpreted as a trend.

Table 4 shows our estimates of the age-specific fertility rates (ASFR) for the

IHARP sample of Indochinese women of childbearing age (N = 313), broken down by ethnic group: again, the overall Indochinese totals are

weighted at each age for the proportion of the total U.S. Indochinese

population represented by each ethnic group. Our sample did not include

women at the youngest ages, so we extrapolated a rate for the 15-19 age

group, based on the data calculated from the other ages and from patterns of

age-specific birth rates in Asian nations (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1979).

From these rates, we derived a total fertility rate (TFR) of 5.61 children per Indochinese woman. By combining the age-specific fertility rates with

children-ever-born by age, we used the Trussell modification of the Brass

fertility estimation methods (See, United Nations, 1983; Arriaga etal, 1976) to

produce a corrected estimated TFR of 5.75 children per Indochinese woman

in the United States. By comparison, the total fertility rate in the United

States in 1985 was 1.8 per woman (Population Reference Bureau, 1985).

Sample sizes within each ethnic group were too small to calculate corrected

TFRs, but it may be of interest to report the unadjusted rates, which are

included in Table 4: Hmong (11.90), Khmer (7.40), Lao (6.55), Chinese-

Vietnamese (4.65) and Vietnamese (3.40). The fact that all groups except the ethnic Chinese-Vietnamese and the Vietnamese have current total fertility levels that are higher even than cumulative fertility for each group (as


TABLE 3

Children Ever Born, by Ethnic Group

(IHARP 1983 Sample of Women of Childbearing Age. N=3i3)

Age Groups

Viet- Hmong Khmer Lao Chinese namese (N=63) (N=54) (N=61 (N=53) (N=82)

TOTAL* (weighted)

20 to 24

25 to 29

30 to 34

35 to 39

40 to 44

45 to 49

2.50

3.93

5.11

5.13

6.75

8.63

1.78

2.00

3.45

3.83

3.88

5.50

1.67

2.16

3.30

4.71

4.75

5.25

1.00

2.14

2.82

3.33

4.77

5.29

1.22

1.79

3.27

3.63

5.60

4.63

1.41

2.09

3.34

3.83

5.14

5.26

* Totals are weighted to reflect the proportion of each ethnic group in the overall Indochinese population of the United States as of September 1985.

TABLE 4

Age-Specific Birth Rates (Children Born in Previous Year), by Ethnic Group

(IHARP 1983 Sample of Women of Childbearing Age N=3i3)

Age Groups

Viet- Hmong Khmer Lao Chinese namese (N=63) (N=54) (N=61) (N=53) (N=82)

TOTAL* (weighted)

20 to 24

25 to 29

30 to 34

35 to 39

40 to 44

45 to 49

0.31

0.47

0.66

0.52

0.25

0.17

0.40

0.46

0.38

0.10

0.14

0

0.50

0.39

0.20

0.14

0.08

0

0.21

0.33

0.26

0.13

0

0

0.17

0.27

0.13

0.11

0

0

0.26

0.34

0.24

0.14

0.05

0.01

TFR* 11.90 7.40 6.55 4.65 3.40 5.61

* Totals are weighted to reflect the proportion of each ethnic group in the overall Indochinese population of the United States as of September 1985. ** TFR (Total Fertility Rate) = (Sum of Age-Specific Birth Rates) x 5. The overall rate of 5.61 includes an extrapolated estimate for ages 15 to 19.


reflected by the total number of children born to women aged 45-49 in Table

3) could reasonably be a consequence of two phenomena: 1) a self-selection

of lower-parity women in the migration process ?those women who already had numerous children being less likely to migrate, thus leading to artificially low numbers of children-ever-born at the older ages of refugee respondents; and/or 2) a temporarily high level of current fertility, reflecting a "catch-up"

period of reproduction, which will last only for a short period of time. The

latter explanation seems preferable, for two reasons: 1) the Vietnamese, who

have been in the U.S. the longest, also have lower current fertility than

would be suggested by the number of children ever born to older women; and 2) the current pace of childbearing among the Hmong, especially, is

almost unbelievably high, and were it to continue would equal the level of

the Hutterites?acknowledged to be the world's most fertile group. It is also instructive to compare our results with another study of

Indochinese fertility in the United States. Hopkins and Clarke (1983) matched

birth records in Oregon with lists of known refugees in that state. They then

calculated age-specific birth rates and a general fertility rate for the popula? tion of Indochinese refugees in Oregon. Their observed rate of 127 births

per 1,000 women of childbearing age (15-44) was lower than our weighted

figure of 209 (using ages 15-49), but it was still twice the average for the

United States as a whole. Their data also reveal that a substantial proportion of births in the Indochinese population were higher order births, signaling the maintenance of large families. Among the Hmong, for example, Hop? kins and Clarke found that 35 percent of all women giving birth in 1981 had

already borne four or more children. Among the Khmer the percentage was

18, and among the Vietnamese it was 11, compared to only 4 percent for all

U.S. births.

Testing the Conceptual Model

Our review of the literature led to the development of a conceptual model

(Figure I) showing the relationship between fertility and its antecedent and

intermediate causes, while controlling for certain proximate determinants

of fertility. Antecedent factors include pre-migration social background characteristics of the refugees and various aspects of their migration history. Intermediate factors emphasize the roles that economic and cultural adap? tation to the United States have played in shaping fertility levels. The

proximate determinants of fertility in the United States include the number

of years married, the number of children born prior to arrival in the United

States and the length of residence in the United States.

Differences Between Means

As a first step in testing the model, we examined what turned out to be


largely linear relationships between fertility and each of these factors for our

sample of 313 Indochinese women of childbearing age. The results are

summarized in Table 5. We used the number of children born per year in the

United States as the primary fertility index. This measure has the advantage of directly controlling for length of time in the United States, which obviously will affect how many children will have been born. The Hmong, on average, have borne 0.46 children per year in the United States, whereas the Khmer have been bearing children at the pace of 0.27 per year, the Vietnamese at a

rate of 0.21 per year, the Lao at the rate of 0.20 per year, and the Chinese

respondents (with the oldest average age) at a rate of 0.16 per year. Note that

the data in Table 5 are weighted to reflect the actual proportion of each

ethnic group in the total Indochinese population in the United States (thus

relatively increasing the effect of the Vietnamese and decreasing the influence

of the Hmong in the results); unweighted results (not shown) show sharper differences between means.

Individually, the social background antecedents that distinguish mem?

bers of the two immigration waves also distinguish their fertility levels.

Table 5 shows the mean number of children born per year in the United

States according to two of the most important background characteristics of

migrants: urban/rural residence and education. Respondents from a rural

background are reproducing at a significantly higher rate in the United

States than those from an urban background. Those with no education in

their homeland have higher fertility rates in the United States than do those

with an elementary education (grades 1-6), who in turn have higher fertility than those with more advanced levels of education. In fact, the fertility of

women with less than six years of education is twice as high as that of women

with 12 years or more of education.

Migration history was another set of antecedent factors hypothesized to

affect fertility in the United States. Those who had suffered the greatest hard?

ships, as measured by length of time in refugee camps and the recent death

of family members (especially the deaths of children), were expected to

exhibit the higher levels of fertility. This expected relationship was explained as a function of the predisposing background characteristics (such as ethnicity, urban/rural residence, and education) of people who spent differing lengths of time in camps, and also as a function of the "making up" of births that may have been postponed due to encampment or may be viewed as a replacement for lost family members. The data in Table 5 show that the amount of time

spent in camps is positively associated with fertility in the United States.

Those respondents who spent more than one year in refugee camps were

averaging substantially more children than were those who had spent less

than one year in the camps. This is partly a consequence of the fact that the

Hmong and the Khmer, who have the highest fertility, also spent the

greatest amount of time in the camps. The number of child deaths in the

00

> H 0 Z

TABLE 5

Children Born Per Year in the United States, by Selected Migration and Adaptation Variables

(IHARP 1983 Sample of Women of Childbearing Age, N=3i3)*

Variable Variable Variable

ANTECEDENT VARIABLES:

Ethnicity:**

Hmong

Khmer

Lao

Chinese-Vietnamese

Vietnamese

Background: ***

Rural

Urban

Education:**

None

1 to 6 years

7 to 11 Years

12 Years or More

.46

.27

.20

.16

.21

.29

.21

.31

.26

.20

.14

63

54

61

53

82

105

208

95

109

62

47

ECONOMIC ADAPTATION:

Wage-Earners in Family:**

None Working .28 186

One Wage-Earner .17 89

Both Spouses Work .13 38

Percent of Time Employed in U.S.:**

Never Employed .27 225

Under 50% of Time .15 60

Over 50% of Time .11 28

Family Job Income:**

None .27 189

Under $7,500 .18 58

Over $7,500 .16 66

Welfare Dependency:*

CULTURAL ADAPTATION:

English Literacy Level:**

None or Poor .28

Some or Fair .20

Good or Fluent .15

Related Families in Household :*???

One Family

Two Families

Three or More

PROXIMATE VARIABLES:

Years in the U.S.:

Under 3 Years

.23

.21

.23

.28

.20

169

91

53

156

100

57

114

156 3 to 5 Yrs.

o

53

o

H E w

z H w O

4^ CO

TABLE 5 (continued)

Children Born Per Year in the United States, by Selected Migration and Adaptation Variables

(IHARP 1983 Sample of Women of Childbearing Age, N=3i3)*

Variable Variable Variable

MIGRATION HISTORY:

Time in Refugee Camps:***

Under 2 Months

2 to 12 Months

Over 12 Months

Children Lost:****

None

One or More

.17

.19

.28

.22

.29

31

105

177

284 29

Full Dependency .27

Some Dependency .22

None . 14

Poverty/Income

Level:***

Below Poverty Line .25 Low Incomes .17

Moderate Incomes .15

182

47

80

244 27

39

Over 5 years . 18 43

Children Born Before Arrival in U.S.

0 to 1 Child .33 115

2 to 4 Children .20 130

5 or More .07 66

Years Married:**

Under 5 Years .49 35

5 to 10 Years .32 62 10 to 20 Years .18 111

Over 20 Years .06 54

* N = unweighted frequencies, reflecting the actual sample size (a total of 313 women). ** p < .0001 _

??? p = ( .01 x = mean number of children born per year in the U. S., weighted to reflect the actual proportion **** ? = p = Not Significant of each ethnic group in the total Indochinese population in the U.S.

SOURCE: Indochinese Health & Adaptation Research Project (IHARP), San Diego State University


family since the 1975 revolutions is also found to be positively related to

fertility, although the differences are not significant at the .05 level. As will

be shown below, however, multivariate analyses show that, controlling for

the influence of other factors, the number of children lost enters our regression

equation as a predictor of the number of children born in the United States.

The Hmong and the Khmer, with high fertility backgrounds, also suffered

the greatest amount of family loss and infant mortality, and their higher

fertility undoubtedly reflects the interaction of both background charac?

teristics and migration history. We measured economic adaptation by examining whether or not the

respondent had been employed in the United States, and if so, the proportion and type of employment of the respondent: and by looking at the number of

wage-earners in the family and the family's level of job income, poverty and

welfare dependency. Table 5 shows that on each of the measures, fertility is

lower as socioeconomic adaptation is greater. Respondents who are employed have lower fertility than those who are not; and among those who are or have

been employed, fertility decreases as the percent of time that the respondent has been employed in the United States increases. Moreover, families where

neither the husband nor the wife are working have a level of fertility more

than twice as high as that in families where both spouses are employed; and

respondents with the lowest level of family income have the highest fertility, as do those with the highest level of poverty and welfare dependency.

Cultural adaptation was measured mainly by the level of English language

proficiency, and by the household structure of the respondent (e.g., whether

or not the respondent lived with extended families). We noted earlier that

English proficiency in an Anglocultural setting is a central resource in the

social and economic integration of these newcomers, affecting such factors as

access to health care and family planning services, the number of American

friends and acquaintances, the ability to get a job or a driver's license and to

learn basic information about U.S. culture. As can be seen in Table 5,

fertility significantly decreases as the level of English reading and writing

literacy increases (p < .0001). However, tied as English proficiency is to

formal education, this effect may be as much a measure of background characteristics as it is expressly of adaptation processes.

On the other hand, contrary to expectations, we found no significant bivariate relationship (r = -.013) between fertility and the presence of

extended kin in the houshold, despite the fact that the two highest fertility

groups, the Hmong and the Khmer, are most likely to reside in multiple

family households. What is more, multiple regression results show that,

controlling for other factors, the number of families who share a household

is negatively related to fertility (as shown in Table 6, the standardized

regression coefficient is -.115), although the effect is small and accounts for

only one percent of the explained variance in the dependent variable (the

There TABLE 6

Multiple Regression Analysis, Predicting Level of Fertility in the United States* (IHARP Ti Sample of Women of Childbearing Age, N=3i3)

Predictor Variables BETA Correlation Significance R2 Change Analytical Category

# Years in the U.S. .593 .294 14.79 .0000 .089

# Children Pre-Arrival -.338 -.417 -7.04 .0000 .174

# Years Married -.304 -.377 -6.31 .0000 .034

English Literacy Level -.211 -.030 - 5.73 .0000 .028

# Wage-Earners in Family -.181 -.004 -4.59 .0000 .065

Family Job Income -.153 .059 -3.33 .0009 .010

# Families in Household -.115 -.013 -3.70 .0002 .009

# Children Lost .101 .058 3.26 .0012 .009

Hmong Ethnicity .210 .247 6.80 .0000 .072

Chinese Ethnicity -.068 -.137 -2.21 .0275 .004

Time (covariate)

Marital History (covariate)

Adaptation Variables (economic, cultural)

Migration History

Ethnocultural Group

Multiple Correlation = .704 R2 = .496 Standard Error = .644

* The regression is weighted to reflect the proportion of each ethnic group in the total U.S. Indochinese population. The weighted mean of the dependent variable (# of children born in the U.S.) is 0.827; the unweighted mean is 0.905.


number of children born in the United States). It may be that extended kin

relations, while normally promotive of pronatalism, can also in this type of resettlement context encourage families to place limits on fertility and

choose an antinatalist position as an adaptive response. There is some

evidence that the presence of a grandparent in the household who is available

to take care of preschool children serves to free women of childbearing age to

enter the labor force, a decision that tends to have a depressive influence on

fertility. To unravel the complex sociocultural dynamics involved will

probably require further in-depth ethnographic research. We have, in any case, found no evidence to support a pronatalist hypothesis in this regard.

Finally, Table 5 shows the expected covariance of recent fertility with key

proximate determinants. Clearly, the more children a woman had born

prior to arrival in the U.S., and the longer a woman has been married (and hence the older she is and the more children she is likely to have already

had), the less likely she is to bear children in this country. More noteworthy is the finding that the number of children born per year in the U.S. declines

steadily and significantly with length of residence in and thus exposure to

the United States. Only in part is this a function of the socioeconomic

characteristics differentiating the two immigrant waves; that is, first-wave

refugees were also more urban, educated and prone to lower fertility than

more recent arrivals. However, among second-wave refugees, women who

had lived 3 to 5 years in the U.S. were bearing children at a significantly lower rate (.20) than those with less than 3 years of U.S. residence (.28). This

pattern of a general decline in childbearing over time in the host society is

observable among all the ethnic groups and suggests a cumulative depressive

impact on fertility as a result of economic and cultural adaptation processes.

Multivariate Analysis

We utilized multiple regression techniques to provide a more complete test

of the model shown in Figure I. The objective, of course, is to identify the main determinants of refugee fertility. Table 6 summarizes the ordinary least

squares (OLS) model with number of children born in the United States as

the criterion variable. Not unexpectedly, the single most important direct factor is the length of time in the United States, followed by the other two

proximate covariates: the number of children born prior to arrival in the

U.S. and the number of years married (a proxy for age). Current childbearing declines as the number of years married increases (and implicitly as fecundity declines as a function of age) and as parity increases. Together, these three

factors account for nearly 30 percent of the explained variance in the

dependent variable (R2 = .297). It is of some consequence, then, that there are several additional variables that are significantly related to fertility, net of the influence of years in the U.S., years married, and number of

children born prior to arrival.


Pre-migration social background variables (urban/rural residence and

education) do not enter the regression equation. Rather, their effects are

mediated by other variables, mainly adaptation and ethnicity measures.

English literacy level, the number of wage-earners in the family, and family

job income emerge as significant predictors of lower fertility, together

accounting for over 10 percent of the explained variance in the OLS model.

We have already noted the modest but negative contribution to fertility of

the number of families sharing the household. Among migration history variables, the number of children lost is positively related to fertility, as

hypothesized, but length of time in refugee camps does not achieve signifi? cance; its effects are mediated through more predictive factors. Of these,

Hmong ethnicity (entered as a dummy variable) is the strongest predictor reflecting the extraordinarily elevated levels of fertility among the Hmong.

Interestingly, controlling for other variables, Chinese-Vietnamese ethnicity enters into the equation as a negative but negligible correlate; Khmer, Lao

and Vietnamese ethnicity do not enter into the equation at all. Thus, except for the unique situation of the Hmong, the effect of ethnicity per se on

fertility is almost entirely accounted for by the influence of other variables in

the model.

As can be seen in Table 6, the final OLS model accounts rather remarkably for nearly half (R2 = .496) of the variation in fertility levels in the United

States within the Indochinese refugee population, and generally confirms

the conceptual model discussed earlier in this article. In particular the data

highlight the relative importance of economic and cultural adaptation as a

downward pressure on fertility in the United States.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This article presents an analysis of fertility levels among Indochinese refugees to the United States, and examines the influence of adaptation and adjustment

processes on those levels of fertility. An important finding is that most of our

expectations about fertility differentials, drawn from a review of the literature

on the relationship between fertility and migration and on ethnographic data about each of the ethnic groups, were borne out in our analysis: first-wave

migrants do have lower fertility than second-wave; the Hmong do have the

highest levels of fertility, followed by the Khmer, the Lao, the Chinese-

Vietnamese and the Vietnamese; background characteristics such as urban

residence and education play subtle but important roles in determining

subsequent fertility levels; those respondents who have made the greatest

progress in terms of economic and cultural adjustment to their new environ?

ment have the lowest levels of fertility. The presence of extended kin rela?

tions in the household was found, however, to be negatively associated with

fertility. In general, then, our analysis confirms existing conceptual frame?

works.


Without a doubt, the single most important finding is that the levels of

fertility within the Indochinese community are so high. This fact has important significance on at least three fronts: 1) it calls for an adjustment for natural

increase to be made in the estimates of the size of the Indochinese population; 2) it calls for a public policy to deal with the substantial maternal and child

health and family planning needs within the Indochinese community; and

3) it calls for an increased recognition of the effects of fertility on the

achievement of refugee economic self-sufficiency, which is the principal

goal of U. S. refugee policy?as formulated in the Refugee Act of 1980 (Public Law 96-212), and in subsequent amendments and extensions of this landmark

legislation.

Adjustment of the Size of the Indochinese Population

As we discussed in the introduction to this article, from 1975 to the end of

September 1985, a total of 807,321 Indochinese were admitted to the United

States (765,731 as refugees and 41,590 as immigrants). This total is in addition

to the 21,956 Vietnamese immigrants who had settled in the U.S. prior to

1975, and who will be excluded from our calculations for purposes of

estimating the natural increase of the post-1975 refugee population. Like

most migrant groups, young adults of childbearing age are disproportionately represented in the Indochinese population. Because of the higher than

average level of fertility, it is probable that the rate of natural increase in this

population is substantially higher than the rate for the U.S. population, and

that in the near future the Indochinese population in the U.S. will continue

to increase as a fraction of the total population through natural increase

alone. We have used data on number of children born per person in the

IHARP sample to estimate the likely augmentation of the total Indochinese

population in the United States. We judge our data to be generally repre? sentative of the Indochinese population in the entire United States, and so

our estimates should provide a reasonable approximation of national data.

Given the way in which IHARP data were collected, we based our

calculations on the number of children born in the U.S. per person for

people of each Indochinese ethnic group aged 25-64. We then multiplied that rate times the proportion of the total ethnic population that was between

those ages, yielding an estimate of the number of children born in the United

States per person in the total ethnic population. This preliminary step was

necessary because very young and very old persons were not included in the

respondent sample. Multiplying the estimated number of children born in

the United States per person in each ethnic population times the number of

refugees admitted from each ethnic group produced the estimates of the

likely total number of Indochinese refugees (See, Appendix for calculations). The method automatically adjusts for average length of time in the United


States. Note that we did not make an adjustment for mortality, but since the

age structure is so young, loss through death is probably negligible in

comparison to the contribution made to natural increase by fertility. As of

September 30, 1985, then, the results of our adjustments for natural increase

indicate a total Vietnamese and Chinese-Vitnamese population in the U.S.

of 665,755 (much higher than the sum of the 526,652 post-1975 admissions

plus the 21,956 pre-1975 immigrants).2 a total Khmer population of 159,739

(compared to 129,848 admissions),3 a Lao population of 122,572 (compared to

93,445 admissions); and a Hmong population of 80,223 (more than 40% greater than the 57,376 admissions).

Our calculations thus lead to an estimated total Indochinese population of 1,028,289 on September 30, 1985 ? 25 percent greater than the number of

admissions into the country. At its current rate of growth the Indochinese

population has probably overtaken the Cuban-American population as the

largest refugee population in the United States. In fact, the Indochinese as a

whole now constitute one of the largest Asian-origin groups in the United

States.4 This remarkable phenomenon has occurred in less than a decade.

Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning Needs

The second phase of IHARP questionnaires was conducted in mid-1984,

slightly less than a year after the Tl interviews. In that short interval, 22

percent of Hmong respondents of childbearing age had borne a child, while

19 percent of the Khmer had done so, as had 11 percent of the Chinese and 7

percent of the Vietnamese. Furthermore, in mid-1984, 16 percent of Hmong

respondents indicated that they were pregnant, while 9 percent of the Khmer

were pregnant, as were 4 percent of the Chinese, and 3 percent of the

Vietnamese. We should also note that 41 percent of Hmong female re-

2 Federal data do not distinguish the ethnic Chinese-Vietnamese among total Vietnamese admissions. IHARP data, however, suggest that the proportion of ethnic Chinese is no less than 20% and no more than 33% of the total Vietnamese population in the United States, with practically all Chinese-Vietnamese coming in the post-1978 second wave of immigration. For our calculations here we have used a proportion of 30% Chinese-Vietnamese among the total number of Vietnamese refugees (excluding pre-1975 admissions and post-1975 immigrants, whom we assume to be predominantly non-Chinese).

3 IHARP data indicate that at least 15% of all Cambodian refugee admissions are ethnic Chinese-Cambodians. The number of Chinese-Cambodians in the IHARP sample (N = 21) was too small to treat separately in our analyses, but no significant differences were found in the fertility behavior of the Chinese-Cambodian subsample compared to the ethnic Khmer.

4 Among Asian-origin groups, the 1980 U.S. Census enumerated a Chinese population of 806,040 persons, followed by the Filipino (774,652), Japanese (700,974), Korean (354,593) and Asian Indian (361,531) populations. All of these Asian-origin groups have also been growing rapidly in the 1980s and it is estimated that the Chinese and Filipino groups had each passed the one million mark by 1985{cf. Bouvier and Agresta, 1985).


spondents of childbearing age indicated that they plan to have more children, as do 33 percent of the Khmer, 22 percent of the Lao, 19 percent of the

Chinese and 27 percent of the Vietnamese respondents. These data point out clearly the magnitude of need for maternal and

child health services to be continually made available to the Indochinese

refugee population at least for the near term (Rumbaut et al, forthcoming). Of course, such services do currently exist in San Diego and are nearly

universally known about by women of reproductive age. However, our data

indicate that the provision of such services cannot be thought of as a temporary

phenomenon, but rather is a need within the community that will exist for

several years to come.

We can infer the potential need for family planning services within the

Indochinese community by comparing the completed family size with the

average number of children born to women who say they plan to have no

more, which we call the "implicit stopping rule". For example, the average number of children born to Hmong women who say they plan to have no

more is 5.6. Since this is well below the average number ever born to older

women in the sample, women will have to begin utilizing fertility limitation

methods in their early thirties if they are to have an average of no more than

5.6 children. The "implicit stopping rule" among Khmer women is only 3.2

children ? the average number of children already born to women who plan no more children. The current rapid pace of childbearing among the Khmer

means that it will take considerable motivation as well as availability of

services to limit family size to 3.2 children.

Among the Chinese and Vietnamese the already lower levels of fertility indicate the already fairly widespread use of contraception; and the implied

stopping rules of 4.6 children and 3.9 children, respectively, do not indicate

any particular shift in current behavior to achieve the family-size goals

implied in these data. Nonetheless, the levels of fertility for all groups are

well above the average for the United States, and to the extent that socio-

economic and sociocultural adaptation is accompanied by declining fertility, the demand for family planning services will almost surely be on the rise

during the next several years. In this context, the findings of a recent study of family planning

knowledge, attitudes and practices of Indochinese refugees in San Francisco

(Minkler et al, 1985) are especially relevant. Those investigators found that

only 70 percent of the respondents who were not currently pregnant, and

who did not want to become pregnant, were actually using contraceptive methods ?a significant "knowledge-practice gap". Of those using contra?

ception, one third were found to be using methods which were not considered

"highly effective". Lack of English language proficiency and a limited

knowledge of reproductive physiology were identified as the main barriers

to family planning information and services. The study concluded that


"significant numbers of the refugee population undergoing resettlement are

unlikely to realize their fertility aspirations and are thereby less likely to

attain self-sufficiency as rapidly without continued special access services as

adjuncts to routine family planning clinic care" (pp. iii, 95). Moreover, this

study included a cost-benefit analysis of subsidized family planning services, based on California data, which found a 17 to 1 ratio of benefits to costs ? i.e., that "for every public dollar spent on family planning services to Southeast

Asian couples not intending to have a child, the present value of expected

public costs avoided would be 17 dollars" (pp. iv, 79-83). This is a conclusion of

considerable policy significance.

Fertility and Refugee Economic Self-Sufficiency

Finally, the data clearly underscore the relationship between fertility and

poverty in the refugee communities. In our conceptual model, we emphasized the positive side of that relationship ?that higher family income from jobs is

predictive of lower levels of fertility. But the other side of the coin is that

families with larger numbers of children are heavily dependent upon public assistance income, for which they are eligible on the same basis as U.S.

citizens. Indeed, for the entire adult sample of Indochinese refugees, the

major predictors of welfare dependency are the length of time in the United

States (the shorter the time the greater the dependency), age (the older the

person the more dependent on welfare income), English proficiency (the less

proficient in English the more dependent on welfare income), and the

number of dependent children in the family (the greater the number of

children the greater the dependency). Using welfare dependency as the

crierion variable (the ratio of family welfare income to total annual income), we ran ordinary least squares models separately for each of the ethnic

groups, and separately for each sex. The results confirm that no matter how

the data are organized, the number of children in the family is a major determinant of welfare dependency.

Specifically, Table 7 presents OLS results predicting the level of welfare

dependency among our sample of women of childbearing age (N=313). Net

of the influence of length of residence in the United States (the strongest

predictor), the two fertility variables (children born in the U.S. and children

born before arrival in the U.S. but residing with the respondent) together account for 13 percent of the variation in welfare dependency levels among Indochinese women in these relatively younger age groups. Of course,

eligibility for public assistance (especially for the principal welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children), as well as the levels of such

assistance, are conditioned in part on the number of dependent children

residing with indigent applicants. But such rules and programs cannot

adequately explain, nor do they produce, the complex cycle of fertility, poverty and dependency.

4^ at 00

TABLE 7

Multiple Regression Analysis, Predicting Level of Welfare Dependency in the United States

(IHARP Ti Sample of Women of Childbearing Age, N =313)

Predictor Variables BETA Correlation Significance R2 Change Comment

# Years in the U.S. -.597 .506

# Children Born in U.S. .306 -.024

# Children Born Pre-U.S. .273 .221 (and living at home)

Age of Respondent .132 .114

English Literacy Level -.080 -.389

Lao Ethnicity .141 .117

Khmer Ethnicity .098 .145 Vietnamese Ethnicity .080 -.162

-16.04

8.30

6.78

3.33

- 2.20

4.14

2.78 2.08

.0000

.0000

.0000

.0009

.0280

.0000

.0057

.0379

.256

.066

.063

.011

.003

.012

.005

.004

Welfare Dependency decreases over time

Fertility variables account for 13% of the variance in welfare dependency level

The older the person and the less proficient in Eng? lish the more dependent on welfare

Weak positive associations with welfare dependency

Multiple Correlation = .648 R2 = .419 Standard Error = .346

* The regression is weighted to reflect the proportion of each ethnic group in the total U.S. Indochinese population. The weighted mean of the

dependent variable (the ratio of family welfare income to total annual income) is 0.620; the unweighted mean is 0.673.


Our basic position with respect to the relationship between welfare

dependency and fertility?as implied by the double-arrow in Figure I between

fertility and "economic adaptation" ? is that it is a dynamic process, differing at different stages of family-building (cf. Hout, 1978). For refugee families

that were already large upon arrival, welfare income has been a safety net

required because the large size of the family depletes the refugees' already scarce resources and hampers the family's ability to become economically self-sufficient. This is especially true when the children are young, on

average. As children age and enter the labor force, the family's welfare

dependency should lessen. In the meantime, those couples who are most

successful in their economic adaptation may also be those who have the

strongest motivation for small families.

In the demographic literature concerning the impact of government

policy on fertility, we find little to support the often-cited but ill-considered

unilinear belief that welfare is a stimulus to high fertility. Although the

current welfare system does, in fact, "reward" high fertility in the sense that

relief is provided in accordance with family size, there is virtually no evidence

that the modest size of welfare payments (which in the U.S. generally keeps families below the federal poverty threshhold while conferring a stigmatized status on the recipient) is viewed as an inducement to have large families

(See, Leroy, 1978, for a review; cf. also World Bank, 1984). The posited

positive relationship between welfare and fertility has a rich history and was

prominently featured long ago in Malthus' discussion of the Poor Law in

England. He argued that the Poor Law was a poor idea because it only

encouraged childbearing among the already miserable lower classes, and

created rather than protected surplus populations. However, historical

evidence has revealed that between 1801 and 1835 those English parishes that

administered Poor Law allowances did not have higher birth, marriage, or

total population growth rates than those in which the Poor Law assistance

was not available (Huzel, 1969). A further analysis examined out-migration rates to parishes which paid both Poor Law allowances-in-aid-of-wages and

child allowances on a scale geared to family size, and compared them to rates

in parishes which paid neither of these allowances; no evidence was found

that the allowances rooted the laborer to his parish of settlement and thus

restricted labor mobility (Huzel, 1980). These data, moreover, supported

precisely an opposite interpretation: namely, that high poverty levels even

in parishes where Poor Law allowances were paid encouraged rather than

restricted labor mobility, and more generally that the allowance system was

a reaction to population increase (and associated social and economic

conditions) rather than a stimulus. Huzel concluded that "Although the

Malthusian Poor Law-population theory was ideally suited to contemporaries who wished to explain away the problems of poverty by shifting the blame on


to the shoulders of the procreating poor, its merit in explaining early

nineteenth-century demographic trends is extremely dubious" (1969:451). In a related vein, a contemporary study of economic adaptation among

Vietnamese, Chinese-Vietnamese and Lao refugees in five U.S. regions

(Boston, Chicago, Houston, Seattle and Orange County, California) found

no evidence that transfer income constituted a powerful disincentive to

seeking earned income, but rather that only with earned income can a

household expect to rise above the poverty level (Caplan et al, 1985). That

study identified household composition as the strongest predictor of economic

self-sufficiency, with two-wage-earner families showing by far the most

dramatic gains in economic status, and suggested that a key to self-sufficiency is the entry of the second spouse into the labor force. We have earlier shown

that the number of wage-earners in the family is also strongly predictive of

lower fertility. For those Indochinese parents who already have a large number of children, welfare income may be a fact of life at least until the

children are grown and economically self-sufficient; but for those with small

families, or those who have not yet begun family-building activity, the

conclusion seems clear that motivation to limit family size ill be positively associated with an ability to avoid later dependence on welfare. The provision of birth control methods to minority groups is always a policy fraught with

potential controversy, but for the Indochinese refugee community the

relationship between family size and welfare dependency is unequivocal. Our findings suggest the need to take family planning services ? and related

support services, including child care ? into account as part of a larger policy aimed to economic self-sufficiency. Refugee resettlement policy, accordingly, should be based on a comprehensive multidimensional and long-term

understanding of the complex process of adaptation ? including the recog? nition that the attainment of economic self-sufficiency by these refugee

groups is shaped by their reproductive behavior as it is by their productive human capital and by the structure of the labor market in which they are

struggling to rebuild their lives.

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APPENDIX

Estimation of Natural Increase Within the Indochinese Population of the United States

ETHNIC GROUP

Step in Estimation Procedure HMONG KHMER LAO

VIETNAMESE (incl. ethnic Chinese)*

3.

4.

6.

7.

Children Born in the U.S. Per 1,417 0.577 People Aged 25-64 Years (IHARP Sample, N=739)

Proportion of Ethnic Population .281 .399 that is Aged 25-64 (IHARP House? hold Sample, N=3,003) Estimate of Children Born in U.S. .3982 Per Person of All Ages (1x2) Number of Refugees and 57,376 Immigrants Admitted to U.S. Since 1975

Estimate of Post-1975 Natural 22,847 29,891 Increase (3x4) Pre-1975 Immigrants ? ?

Estimate of Population of 80,223 159,739 Indochinese Origin as of 30 September 1985 (4 + 5 + 6)

0.511

.372

.2302 .3117

129,848 93,445

29,127

122,572

0.566

.395

.2224

526,652

117,147

21,956

665,755

TOTAL INDOCHINESE POPULATION: (as of 30 Sept. 1985)

1,028,289

* Totals are weighted: Vietnamese (0.7) + Chinese-Vietnamese (0.3). Separate figures for these two groups are as follows: Children Born in U.S. Per people Aged 25-64 = 0.632 for Vietnamese and 0.412 for Chinese. Proportion of Ethnic Population that is 25-64 = .389 for Vietnamese and .401 for Chinese.

Fertility and Adaptation: Indochinese Refugees in the United States

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