Spain

Since the late twentieth century, Spain has undergone a rapid transition from emigration to immigration country, receiving around 510,000 immigrants annually between 2000 and 2022, approximately half from Latin America. This transformation has substantially increased population diversity, yet less is known about how diversity develops in relatively new immigration countries compared with established destinations. We combine register data, a retrospective analysis of births by parental background and a multi-state cohort-component model to examine changes in population diversity between 2000 and 2022 and project its potential evolution to 2062. The results show a rapid transformation of Spain’s population composition. Between 2000 and 2022, the share of the population under 40 with a foreign background – defined by country of birth and parental origins – increased from 5% to 28%, while 13% had a Latin American background in 2022. Assuming that migration, fertility and ethnic-mixing patterns remain constant, the share of the population under 40 with a foreign background would exceed 65% by 2062, with those of Latin American background reaching 32%. These findings demonstrate that the demographic consequences of immigration extend beyond the growth of the foreign-born population, as births and ethnic mixing progressively reshape the Spanish-born population. The study highlights the importance of incorporating foreign family backgrounds when assessing population diversity and provides new evidence on how diversity may evolve across generations in a recent immigration country.

Spain's fertility is among the lowest in the world, due largely to an increasing number of childless women. Childlessness, whether a voluntary choice or not, often results from postponement of childbearing. This delay could be driven partly by the increased instability of partnerships and adverse labour-market conditions. Using data from Spain's Fertility Survey 2018, we use multichannel sequence analysis to identify the most common patterns of partnering and employment trajectories and then assess the likelihood of remaining childless at age 40 for each pattern. Results indicate that pathways deviating from the traditional marital pattern are highly associated with childlessness. When these trajectories are coupled with high attachment to the labour market, the likelihood of remaining childless increases further. These associations are moderated by education. Partnership status is a stronger determinant of childlessness than employment status, especially for highly educated women.

BACKGROUNDThe postponement of first childbirth is a well-established trend across many high-income countries.While delayed childbearing often reduces the likelihood of having additional children, some women compensate by shortening the interval before a second birth.However, the capacity to recuperate fertility after a late start varies, particularly according to educational attainment, and the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. OBJECTIVESThis study examines how partnership trajectories shape the timing and likelihood of first and second births, with a focus on educational differences.It explores whether stable partnerships are associated with earlier childbearing and whether they facilitate fertility recuperation after delayed motherhood, with particular attention to educational differences.

BACKGROUNDFertility in Spain has declined and shifted to later ages alongside diversification of family formation, raising questions about how partnership life courses shape completed fertility by late reproductive age. OBJECTIVEWe aim to assess how key features of partnership trajectories -timing, duration, and sequencing -relate to motherhood and parity by age 41 among women in contemporary Spain, and whether associations differ by education.analyze 7,656 women, born 1962-1977, in the Spanish Fertility Survey (2018).A feature-selection approach identifies salient aspects of union histories (e.g., postponement or absence of union, stability, cohabitation, higher-order unions) associated with (1) entry into motherhood and (2) progression to higher-order births by age 41, with results stratified by educational attainment. METHODS We RESULTSDelayed or foregone union formation during the reproductive years is strongly associated with lower fertility, particularly a lower likelihood of entering motherhood.Stable marriage is consistently linked to higher probabilities of both becoming a mother and progressing to higher-order births.Cohabitation and post-separation trajectories show more nuanced and generally weaker associations with fertility in these cohorts.Associations between partnership status at later reproductive ages and fertility outcomes are more pronounced among highly educated women.

Despite its significance, men’s fertility has been largely overlooked in demographic research. This study seeks to address this gap by conducting a systematic comparative analysis of men’s and women’s fertility using data from the Spanish ECEPOV–2021 survey, a large-scale data set (N = 424,493) from the Spanish national statistical office. Findings indicate that women generally exhibit slightly higher completed cohort fertility rates than men, with exceptions among remarried, college-educated, and immigrant men, who show higher fertility than their female counterparts. Childlessness emerges as a key factor underlying fertility differentials between the sexes, accounting for nearly half of the observed difference. After using matching techniques to control for compositional differences, the study concludes that adjusting for demographic and socio-economic factors significantly reduces, although does not entirely eliminate, the fertility differential. Residual differences may stem from measurement errors, selection biases, or unmeasured variables.