Faith and Fertility in the 21st Century

• In Event: 3148 - Understanding Fertility across Time and Context

Abstract

Gender equality is increasingly thought to be the new natalism—the force that will bring about the reemergence of sustainable fertility from below replacement levels. Women who anticipate taking on a disproportionate share childrearing responsibilities are more likely to opt out of childbearing than those who anticipate involved partners. Because religion fosters traditional gender roles, its pronatalist influence could diminish in a world where gender equality is emerging as the new natalism. We use four waves of World Values Survey data from low-fertility countries to show that religion’s positive influence on fertility has not in fact waned in recent decades. We suggest that marriage plays an important role in understanding religion’s continued positive influence: those with egalitarian gender role attitudes are less likely to be married and have slightly fewer children. Religion has become a stronger positive predictor of marriage and childbearing over time. Although our submission reads somewhat like a completed paper, we plan an important addition before the conference: disaggregating our results by region. We will test whether the interrelationships between religion, fertility, and gender role attitudes that we document are consistent across various parts of Europe, North and South America, East Asia, and Oceania.

Authors

• Laurie F. DeRose, University of Maryland

• W. Bradford Wilcox, University of Virginia

• Javiera Reyes Brito, Universidad de los Andes

• Andres Salazar-Arango, Universidad de la Sabana

• Gloria Huarcaya, Universidad de Piura