Religious affiliation raises fertility even after controlling for education and income

Evidence

In one carefully done study, demographer of religion Michael Blume examined the meticulously recorded Swiss census of 2000, based on almost 7 million respondents. He found that, even after matching respondents on education and income, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews outbreed the religiously nonaffiliated. The gap in fertility varied, ranging from 50 percent to more than double. But it’s not just that religious people have more children than the nonreligious. Religiously nonaffiliated Swiss women are having children at below replacement levels, whereas most religiously affiliated Swiss women are at above replacement. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 494

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s Big God analytical frame: prosocial religious groups out-reproduce rivals, sustaining high-solidarity communities long-term.