Écarts de fécondité en fonction du niveau d’instruction: le rôle de la religion en Grande-Bretagne et en France

Nitzan Peri-Rotem

Population (french edition), 2020, vol. 75, issue 1, 9-38

Abstract: Female education is generally associated with lower fertility and higher rates of childlessness. However, it remains unclear whether higher education implies similar fertility behaviour among women of different religious denominations at varying levels of religiosity. To assess whether this is the case, this study uses data from the British Household Panel Survey and the French Generations and Gender Survey to explore the intersection of religion (measured by religious practice, Catholic affiliation in France, and Protestantism and Catholicism in Britain), education, and fertility outcomes for women born between the 1920s and 1960s. In Britain, higher education reduces the odds of entering motherhood more often among religiously unaffiliated women compared to nominally and practising religious women, although no such interaction effect is found in France. However, religiosity in both countries attenuates the negative relationship between education and completed family size. While unaffiliated women have a negative educational gradient of fertility, this study finds a U-shaped relationship between education and completed fertility among practising Catholic women. Moreover, differences in completed fertility by religious affiliation and practice are more pronounced among highly educated women. These findings are attributed to differences in the perceived value and costs of children across religious groups.

Keywords: religion; religiosity; fertility; education; childlessness; France; Britain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=POPU_2001_0009 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-population-2020-1-page-9.htm (text/html)
free

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cai:popine:popu_2001_0009

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Population (french edition) from Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().