The fertility levels of the two cities (Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa) are among the lowestrnin the country. However the low fertility rates are not the result of a decline in thernnumber of births rather it is due to the presence of large number of women out of maritalrnunion. As a result the marital fertility rates are much higher than the fertility levels of therntotal women. This paper, therefore, uses the data from the 2005 Demographic and HealthrnSurvey of Ethiopia to identify the factors that affect the marital fertility of women in therntwo major cities of the country. Since the two cities have large number of migrants, thernstudy gives special emphasis to the effect of migration status on fertility. The womenrnwhose previous place of residence is out of the two cities are classified as migrantsrnwhereas those who never changed their residence since birth are treated as nonmigrants.rnWomen who are married and are in marital union at the time of the survey arernthe unit of analysis. A total of 757 women of which 515 are migrants and the remainingrn242 are natives are included in the analysis. The study applies descriptive, bivariate andrnmultivariate statistical methods. In the bivariate analysis one-way ANOVA is applied torntest the presence of significant differences in mean CES among the sub-groups ofrnindependent variables. The ANOVA tests indicate that the difference in fertility amongrnthe sub-groups of religion, ethnicity, education, number of times married, age at .firstrnmarriage and variables related to migration status are significant. On the other hand therncontraceptive use, work status and place of residence are not found to be responsible forrnthe fertility variation of the target population. The multivariate finding of the studyrnillustrates that age at first marriage is the strongest factor in causing fertility variationrnamong the sampled women. Education, contraceptive use, religion and ethnicity arernother important factors that affect fertility of the respondents. The multivariate result alsornshows that fertility of the target population does not differ by region and migrationrnrelated variables.