Secularism and Fertility Worldwide

Abstract

This study hypothesizes a link between societal secularism and fertility. Using country-level data from multiple sources (N=181) and multilevel data from 55 countries in the World Values Survey (N=78,639), I document a strong negative relationship between societal secularism and both country-level fertility rates and individual-level fertility behavior. Secularism, even in small amounts, is associated with population stagnation or even decline, whereas highly religious countries have higher fertility rates that promote population growth. This country-level pattern is driven by more than aggregate lower fertility of individual nonreligious people. In fact, secularism is more closely linked to religious than nonreligious people's fertility behavior and appears to be a function of different cultural values related to gender and reproduction in more secular societies. Beyond its importance for the religious composition of the world population, the societal-level association between secularism and fertility is relevant to key fertility theories and may help account, in part, for below-replacement fertility. Rather than religious people becoming a smaller proportion of the world population, demographers have projected that because the nonreligious have fewer children they will make up a smaller proportion of the world population over time (Hackett et al. 2015;Kaufmann 2010;Skirbekk, Kaufmann, and Goujon 2010;Stonawski et al. 2015). This literature improves on secularization theory by highlighting how individual-level secularity limits fertility behavior and thus constrains secularization, but has thus far neglected potential impacts of societal-level secularity despite secularism being more than just an individual attribute. Culture is transmitted, and religious beliefs and preferences acquired, both vertically (i.e., within families) and 1 "Religious" and "nonreligious" can be defined in many ways. Past research has often conceptualized secularism as the inverse of absence of religion, and work on religion and fertility in particularly has frequently focused on binary measures that categorize people as religious or not. In order to consider varieties of secularism, I examine multiple religion/non-religion measures, some of which are binary and some gradational, and aggregations of these items.Secularism and Fertility Worldwide 2 horizontally (i.e., peer-to-peer within the wider culture) Verdier 2000, 2011).Research on religion and fertility has highlighted how the lower fertility of secular individuals limits vertical transmission of secularism, has thus far largely neglected potential demographic limits to horizontal transmission of secularism. The key unanswered question is whether a country-level relationship exists between secularism and fertility net of individual-level religion, which would further constrain secularization-due to fewer children being socialized in more secular contexts-and could contribute to below-replacement fertility.To examine the country-level relationship between secularism and f...

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“…We suspect that continuing to interrogate the relationship between exit and the life course will help scholars arrive at better understandings of ways exit is gendered. We know, for example, that religion and fertility are linked (Hayford and Morgan 2008; Schnabel 2021b), and we know that women carry a disproportionate childcare burden (Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie 2006). Could it be that parents, and perhaps especially mothers, face social expectations from those around them to raise children in religion?…”

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“…For example, we can expect more religious countries to make up a growing proportion of the world population over time, and for the proportion of the world who is religiously unaffiliated to peak and potentially decline around the middle of the 21st‐century (Cutright, Hout, and Johnson 1976; Hackett 2015; Hout, Greeley, and Wilde 2001; Schnabel 2021b). The influence of religion on fertility appears to operate via factors, such as beliefs about and practices related to gender and sexuality, including gender attitudes and modern contraception (Schnabel 2021b). Beyond but related to fertility, religion also shapes sex for pleasure, impacting such factors as premarital and extramarital sex.…”

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