Discrimination and Chinese fertility in Canada

The study examines Chinese fertility in Canada in the contest of minority-s tatus and fertility. Chinese-Canadians are compared with British Canadians, who are considered in this analysis as the majority group. The study is un ique in three ways. First, we argue that discrimination brings a minority g roup not only psychological insecurity but also social-economic insecurity, which can be measured by Chinese husbands' economic status relative to the British Second, we analyze the relationship between discrimination against the Chinese at the social class level and Chinese fertility behavior at th e individual, level, which has been ignored by most previous studies. Third , we describe "insecurities" effects to explain the fertility behavior of t he Chinese across social classes, including the lower classes to which many researchers believe the minority status hypothesis is not applicable. We c onclude that discrimination variations over social classes combined with no rmative influence are a major factor in causing class fertility differentia ls between the Chinese and the British in Canada.