More religious societies have higher fertility than equally wealthy secular ones.

Evidence

In their international comparisons of fertility rates, Pipa Norris and Ronald Inglehart find modern-day societies that are more religious have more children than secular societies, even when countries are matched on national income and education levels. Moreover, when fertility rates are plotted over time within the same country, we find the same story: as religiosity declines in a society over the years (reflecting the secularization trend that has occurred in much of Western and Eastern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century), so do fertility rates. Despite strong government incentives in welfare-state countries such as France and Germany to combat low fertility rates, it is hard to find counterexamples. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 496

Categorization

• QUESTION: The France/Germany counterexample claim is intriguing — welfare-state pronatalist policies failing to check religious-secular fertility gaps deserves a closer look at the Norris-Inglehart data.