Trends in religious observance and fertility behaviour: global empirical results and theoretical models Marion Burkimsher Observatoire des Religions en Suisse Université de Lausanne

How do we come to be here today?

Topics covered in presentation Religious attendance rates of young v. older people Trends in young people’s religiosity Trends in cohort religiosity Trends in attendance related to Human Development Index Relationship of fertility to religiosity

Age, cohort, period variations Age is an effect caused by a person’s age: trends will be caused because they get older over time Cohort effects are the influences of living through similar experiences of everyone born in eg. the 1950s, 1970s… Period effects affect everyone in a country in a fairly similar manner Voas and others have found that cohort differentials (with each generation being less religious than the previous one) are the most important drivers of secularisation. In Georgia the opposite is happening - a revival led by the young. In addition there are period affects of increased participation within cohorts

Data: WVS 1981, 1990, 1999 ESS 2006

Topics covered in presentation Religious attendance rates of young v. older people Trends in young people’s religiosity Trends in cohort religiosity Trends in attendance related to Human Development Index Relationship of fertility to religiosity

WVS & ESS data mainly

Conclusions / 1 In only a few countries of the world are young people more religious than older people: those with this pattern are in Africa and some ex-communist countries In (almost) all countries in both western and eastern Europe the cohorts born in the 1940s are less religious than those born in the 1930s AND those born in the 1950s are less religious than those born in the 1940s It would seem that there was a sea change in the post-war generations compared those born before or during the 2nd World War: the religiosity of those born before and during the war could be a legacy of those times of insecurity (Norris & Inglehart, 2004)

How to deduce real (=period) trends?  Need time series of data. The WVS and ESS can now offer this. Using both, we can look at the period for some countries, though only post-1989 for the ex-communist states. Then either:  Look at trends of a certain age group. Young people are likely to react first to new trends. Therefore I have chosen to look at the under-30s. And / or:  Look at trends for specific cohorts, ie. the generations born in different decades

Topics covered in presentation Religious attendance rates of young v. older people Trends in young people’s religiosity Trends in cohort religiosity Trends in attendance related to Human Development Index Relationship of fertility to religiosity

Two questions from WVS 1. “Independently of whether you go to church or not, would you say you are: A religious person Not a religious person A convinced atheist” (this response was analysed) 2. “How often do you attend religious services?” at least once a month = ‘Attender’  Self-reported attendance rates (may over- or under- estimate, depending on expectations of society)  Head counts of people in church can give lower estimates  NB: Includes any religion

Active believersNon-religious Attend religious servicesSelf-defined atheist Believe in God… Personal prayer Affiliation (‘belonging’) No belief in God Never prays No affiliation Fuzzies

Notes about graphs: Vertical scales vary slide to slide Thin continuous lines denote proportion of attenders Dashed lines denote the proportion of atheists Country groupings and corresponding labels are arbitrary

WVS and ESS data

Conclusions / 2 Some countries show clear indications of secularisation, eg. Australia, Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Spain Some countries show clear indications of revival, eg. Georgia, Russia, Romania, China In many countries the changes are not statistically significant There is a loose inverse correlation of attendance and atheism Since 2000 there has been a greater tendency to polarisation than in the 1980s or 1990s

The age group with the highest proportion of atheists is generally the young (<30), though can also be the middle-aged (30-49) The age group with the highest attendance rate is almost invariably the older group (50+) The biggest losses have been from the Catholic church The biggest gains have been in the national Orthodox churches Some countries have seen youth attendance rates of <5%, but these low rates have not been maintained

Topics covered in presentation Religious attendance rates of young v. older people Trends in young people’s religiosity Trends in cohort religiosity Trends in attendance related to Human Development Index Relationship of fertility to religiosity

Data for Georgia: GGS in 2006 and EVS in 2008 All other data is from WVS and ESS

Conclusions / 3 In countries where young people are at least as religious as older people, then growth is commonly happening. This is most marked in Georgia, but it is also seen in Romania, Latvia and Russia. In countries where most secularisation is happening, then period effects are causing a decline in religiosity across many cohorts - AND there are large inter-cohort differentials. This is seen mainly in the predominantly Catholic countries (which often had higher attendance rates at the start of the period). Not all Catholic countries are being affected as strongly. In many countries there appears to be convergence to a certain level of religious observance; in the most secular countries this band is generally 6-12% of the younger cohorts. In other countries, there is convergence at a higher level. The two major events that have affected religious observance were the Second World War and the fall of communism.

Topics covered in presentation Religious attendance rates of young v. older people Trends in young people’s religiosity Trends in cohort religiosity Trends in attendance related to Human Development Index Relationship of fertility to religiosity

Modernisation > secularisation? Plotted lines for all countries which have data for both 1.Human Development Index (HDI) Composite indicator (max. 100) combining measures of: Health: life expectancy at birth Education: adult literacy and school enrolment Wealth: GDP per capita (PPP) 2.Religious attendance (WVS) relating to the same year or max. 1 year different from the HDI data To be able to plot a trend needed data points from at least 2 years 45 countries plus Georgia plotted

All countries moved from left to right, ie to a higher HDI, except Belarus and Russia WVS data only, attendance rates of full sample, ie relating to whole population

Conclusions / 4 There is a correlation of higher development being associated with lower religiosity, but the spread of values is wide There is a natural level of religiosity related to a country’s level of development and there is convergence towards this Some countries have had a period of revival, which has then been followed by renewed secularisation if that revival took them above the “normal band”, eg. South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Romania Many countries are approaching maximum development (as defined by the HDI), but the minimum attendance rates would appear to be around 10-20% of the population

Topics covered in presentation Religious attendance rates of young v. older people Trends in young people’s religiosity Trends in cohort religiosity Trends in attendance related to Human Development Index Relationship of fertility to religiosity

Data table of fertility by religiosity 23 European countries, as surveyed in the ESS wave 3, 2006 Looked at how many children individuals had had already Age band considered 25-40, ie cohorts Majority of young adults in E. Europe reached reproductive age after fall of communism is 1989 Separated by gender, as men have lower fertility at younger age and are generally (but not universally) less religious

Respondents were divided into 3 categories for this analysis: 1.If a person attends religious services at least once a month, they were classified as an Attender 2.Respondents who answered “No” to the following question were classified as Non-religious “Do you consider yourself as belonging to any particular religion or denomination?” 3.For the group of people who do not regularly attend, yet do consider themselves as belonging to a religion / denomination, they were classified as Fuzzies (a term coined by Voas, 2009). For the few people who said they did attend regularly, but also said they did not belong to a religion / denomination, then they were included in the “Attenders” group.

Conclusions / 5 Scandinavia - low religious participation of young people for decades - relatively low differentials by religiosity Catholic countries - high attendance rates, but also relatively low differentials - possible selection effect ‘Secular’ countries - relatively high differentials by religiosity, more for women than men ‘Diverse’ group - central European band - large differentials of fertility between the religious and secular, with Switzerland and Ukraine being the highest Ex-communist countries - seen religious revivals to some extent - low differentials of fertility, sometimes reversed to ‘normal’ pattern. Georgia fits in to the pattern of other ex-communist countries Possible causes: Legacy of discrimination from communist era? ‘Modern’ religious behaviour parallels ‘modern’ fertility behaviour?

Overall conclusions Georgia is the only (surveyed) country in the world where young people are considerably more religiously active than older people There has been growth in young people’s attendance rates in Georgia from There has been growth in attendance rates in Georgia for the cohorts born in the 1950s, 60s and 70s between 1996 and 2008 Georgia’s revival trend fits the model of religious attendance being related to HDI: the growth seen would bring it into the ‘natural’ band of expected attendance rates, based on its HDI. In the 1990s, the level of religiosity was ‘too low’ for its level of development Across most of Europe, higher religiosity correlates with higher fertility: in Georgia, as in some other ex-communist countries, the pattern is reversed

Thank you!

In 2008:1950s cohort were s cohort were s cohort were In 1981: 1950s cohort were s cohort were WVS and ESS data