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Beliefs and Attitudes

We carry out demographically based projections of religiosity, attitudes and social views based on fertility, mortality, migration, age and cohort changes.

In contrast to the numerous studies on how beliefs and attitudes affect demographic behaviour, there are relatively few investigations on how demographic behaviour affects the population distribution of beliefs and attitudes. Many social views and beliefs are formed early in life tend to be either stable thereafter or follow observable age changes, while cohort based trends can be used for projections. They are affected by the degree of intergenerational transmission and fertility levels and differentials, along with the size and composition of migration and by mortality patterns.

Values and attitudes can be affected by both age and cohort effects, but cohort effects are often more important (Danigelis et al. 2007; Mortimer and Shanahan 2003). Figure 1 gives an example of how we can combine different data sources on cohort and age trends to describe a country where the relevant census information is unavailable and where it would be difficult to base an analysis on only one religion. By combining responses to identical questions in different surveys, we identify the population share with “no religion” by age and cohort in Spain. Visual inspection suggests that a cohort trend exists: Recently born cohorts are more secular, and cohort-age variations matter most in the first half of one’s life.

Figure 1. Secularization in Spain. Proportion (0-1) “without religion” by cohort and age (excluding immigrants). Source: European Value Study, Eurobarometer, and European Social Survey.

Religiosity (measured as intensity or affiliation) has been shown to affect childbearing outcomes, controlling for other economic, social and political influences (Lehrer 2004; Philipov and Berghammer 2007). Religious differences in fertility are often greater than fertility differences by income and occupation groups (Björklund 2006; Goujon et al. 2007; Skirbekk 2008), and religious individuals often state that their fertility decisions are the outcome of their religion’s teachings (Borooah 2004; McQuillan 2004). The degree of religiosity often affects demographic behaviour to a greater extent than the type of religious affiliation (Finnas 1991; Jampaklay 2008; Philipov and Berghammer 2007). And where changes in religious affiliation are small, changes in religious intensity are often great (Marchisio and Pisati 1999).

Substantial migration levels, particularly when combined with higher fertility and the intergenerational transmission of attitudes, can substantially change the prevalence of values within a society over the longer term (e.g., Van Tubergen 2006). Fertility levels of immigrants can be related to their country of origin (e.g., Abbasi-Shavazi 1998), however, the fertility rates of most immigrant groups tend to approach, and in several cases converge to, the host country’s fertility patterns, which could decrease fertility levels of several religious minorities in the coming decades (Nahmias 2004; Ram and George 1990). The more socially conservative and the more religious have higher fertility than others, both within and across nations (Inglehart and Baker 2000).

Religious composition of the population, example of Spain

References

Responsible for this page: Suchitra Subramanian
Last updated: 05 Sep 2011