Atheism and fertility: Using World Values Survey and World Factbook data, I calculated the correlation for 59 countries between the percent who don't believe in God and: 1) the total fertility rate (TFR), and 2) the closeness of the TFR to 2. I computed the first for those concerned about Western countries with below-replacement fertility and the second for those concerned with population stability or over-population.
The Pearson correlation coefficient for the first pair is -.40; for the second pair, it's .25. So, atheism is moderately correlated with subreplacement, but only weakly correlated with population stability.
(If I get time later, I'll control for socioeconomic level since doing so might erase these correlations.)
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This has been known for a while. The closest exceptions to this rule is Eastern Europe which is getting religious and has dropping popuations and the US with similar circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI presume the correlation is due to both being tied to economic prosperity which helps lower family sizes... any other theories?