The Role of Religion for Fertility: An Overview of Contemporary Studies

Abstract

The paper observes key results of the studies of the relationship between religion and fertility in Europe and North America during the last five decades, when this problem attracted serious interest from demographers. Three central hypotheses about this relationship are discussed: the “characteristics hypothesis,” the “norms hypothesis” and the “minorities hypothesis.” Empirical data which initially supported each of these hypotheses are presented. The paper then gives a brief overview of fertility trends in Europe and North America in the second half of the twentieth - the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. It is shown that the focus of studies of fertility-to-religion relation changed considerably in the process of the “second demographic transition”, a complex transformation of values and family patterns in economically developed countries in the last third of the twentieth century. The focus of research shifted accordingly from fertility differences between religions/denominations to the role of personal religiosity as a variable. Then we overview the results of quantitative studies focused on the role of personal religiosity as a factor in both actual fertility and fertility intentions.