What does it mean that culture matters most for fertility? A big part of that is religion✝️⛪️✡️🕌.
A review of the literature shows religious attendance & commitment are linked to much higher fertility, and declining religiosity is driving birthrates lower.
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Berghammer et al. (2020) studied eight European countries and found that religious people have more kids, and their views on family intention are formed very young, even in childhood. In these countries, the fertility advantage was 1/2 a child per woman. (N=34,000) 2/12
Götmark et al. (2020) found that fertility on the national and regional levels was positively correlated with the share of the population in a country that said, "Religion is an important part of daily life."
1000 respondents per country. 3/12
Hayford et al. (2008) looked at the United States and found a difference in fertility of a whole child per woman between those who rated religion as very important and those who rated religion as unimportant or reported no religion. (N=8000) 4/12
Kolk et al. (2023) studied a large data set in Finland and found that those declaring no religion had a TFR of 0.3 births per woman less than the national average, while Muslims had fertility markedly higher than the national average. (N=630,000) 5/12
Stone (2017) described a large increase in fertility in the Republic of Georgia after the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church urged families to have more children. Marital fertility and higher order births in particular rose dramatically. 6/12
Stone (2023) found major differences in both intended and actual fertility among Canadian women based on religious attendance. Those who attended at least monthly had 0.8 more children than those who never attended. Interestingly, the religious used surrogacy more! (N=2700) 7/12
Peri-Rotem (2020) looked at the interaction between religion, education and fertility in the UK and France.
Religious practice led highly educated women to have more children and be more likely to become mothers but had little impact on less educated women! (N=10,000) 8/12
Frejka et al. (2006) found much higher fertility among the religious, with big differences according to religious attendance and ratings of religious importance in both the US and Europe.
Interestingly, the religious advantage was higher in Europe, where attendance is lower. 9/
Stone (2022) found that fertility rates have been high and stable among religious attenders, and that declining fertility is due to a sharply increasing share of people that are not religious. 10/12
Finally, Schnabel (2021) found that the proportion of secular people in a country is associated with sharply lower fertility on a national level, suggesting that these individuals are bringing about cultural shifts across society. 11/12
These studies all suggest that religion is a major driver of fertility, and declining faith is a big part of why birthrates are too low.
Is secularism at odds with civilizational thriving? Can seculars develop pro-natal values too or is a return to the old ways the only answer?
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