Natives and migrants in home production : the case of Germany

In this paper, we assess the impact of international migration, and the induced home-care service labour supply shock, on fertility decisions and labour supply of native females in Germany. Specifcally, we consider individual data of native women from the German Socio-Economic Panel and we merge them with the data on the share of female immigrants and other regional labour market characteristics. We find that an increase of the share of female immigrants at the local level induces women to work longer hours and positively affects the probability to have a child. This effect strengthens for (medium) skilled women and, among them, for women younger than 35 years of age. The negative change in household work attitude confirms the behavioural validity of our results.