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> Religiosity generally increases fertility, but countries like Poland have both high religiosity and low fertility. Religious traditions differ in how pro-fec
by skissane 3y ago
> Religiosity generally increases fertility, but countries like Poland have both high religiosity and low fertility.
Religious traditions differ in how pro-fecund they are.
Israel’s high fertility: Haredi Jews view large families as a religious duty; religious Zionists view the state as spiritually significant, and children are necessary for its future
Poland: in practice, mainstream Catholicism doesn’t really encourage large families any more. Pope Francis even tells Catholics “not to breed like rabbits”. Even with the opposition to contraception, many Catholics just ignore that, and for those who take it seriously, there is always NFP. There are subgroups of Catholicism for which this is different - the trads, Opus Dei. But the vast majority of Polish Catholicism is mainstream conservative, not trad or Opus Dei
It isn’t really an exception if one understands it as needing high religiosity and pro-fecundity religious traditions. Poland has much more of the first than the second.
- spacebanana7 3y agoI find the idea of pro-fecundity traditions appealing as an explanation because it seems to also intuitively explain why more patriotic countries like France have a higher fertility rate than Germany. But I fear it becomes a bit circular - can we really say our explanation for countries having a high fertility is merely their cultural/religious desire to have big families?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- skissane 3y agoI think the right unit of analysis is culture not country. Every country has multiple cultures within it, and some of these cultures are larger than others. Both the US and Israel have high fecundity countercultural religious minorities, such as ultra-Orthodox/Haredi/Hasidic Judaism. The difference is, that minority in the US is such a small percentage of the population, that even though they are growing exponentially, they are still a rounding error in the demographics of the country as a whole (it may be a very different story by the time the 22nd century comes around, but we won't live to see that); whereas, in Israel, they are over 13% of the population, and will likely be 16% by the end of this decade [0] – so their impact on national demographics is much more substantial. [0] https://en.idi.org.il/media/20567/annual-statistical-report-on-ultra-orthodox-haredi-society-in-israel-2022-executive-summary.pdf https://en.idi.org.il/media/20567/annual-statistical-report-...