Program Leader: Vegard Skirbekk

Core team: Valeria Bordone,
Marcin Stonawski,
Suchitra Subramanian,
Daniela Weber

Key Collaborators: Bilal Barakat, Caroline Berghammer, Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz, Laura Romeu Gordo, Anne Goujon,
Brian J. Grim, Conrad Hackett, Melissa Hardy, Eric Kaufmann, Samir KC, Elke Loichinger, Erling Lundevaller, Éric Caron Malenfant,
Victoria Schreitter, Emma Terama, Muhammad Asif Wazir, Jovan Zamac

The ACC project focuses on two major topics: human capital, skills and work performance; and beliefs and attitudes. Understanding age variation in productivity and how to improve senior workers skills and capacities are paramount for ageing countries. Ageing and cohort change will also alter values and belief structures, and a better understanding of these changes is necessary to improve one’s capacity to foresee and develop more targeted policies that relate to societal ageing and other demographic change.

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.

The more socially conservative and the more religious have higher fertility than others, both within and across nations (Inglehart and Baker 2000). 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). 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 although changes in religious affiliation may be 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).

Many social views and beliefs are formed early in life tend to be either stable thereafter or follow observable and predictable changes over the life cycle. Cohort based trends can be used for projections. Population ageing, substantial migration, higher fertility of groups with particular attitudes and high degrees of intergenerational transmission of these attitudes can substantially change the prevalence of values within a society. Our estimates and projections of religion, values, attitudes and beliefs take into account the degree of intergenerational transmissions, fertility differentials, the impact of selective migration and mortality patterns.

References

Skirbekk, V., E. Loichinger, and Weber, D. 2012. "Variation in cognitive functioning as a refined approach to comparing aging across countries" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences


The End of Secularization in Europe: A Socio-Demographic Perspective
Much of the current debate over secularization in Europe focuses only on the direction of religious change and pays exclusive attention to social causes. Scholars have been less attentive to shifts in the rate of religious decline and to the role of demography—notably fertility and immigration. This article addresses both phenomena. It uses data from the European Values Surveys and European Social Survey for the period 1981–2008 to establish basic trends in religious attendance and belief across the 10 countries that have been consistently surveyed. These show that religious decline is mainly occurring in Catholic European countries and has effectively ceased among post-1945 birth cohorts in six Northwestern European societies where secularization began early. It also provides a cohort-component projection of religious affiliation for two European countries using fertility, migration, switching, and age and sex-structure parameters derived from census and immigration data. These suggest that Western Europe may be more religious at the end of our century than at its beginning.
The End of Secularization in Europe?: A Socio-Demographic Perspective
Eric Kaufmann; Anne Goujon; Vegard Skirbekk
Sociology of Religion 2011; doi: 10.1093/socrel/srr033

Kaufmann, E., A. Goujon, and V. Skirbekk. “American political affiliation, 2003–43: A cohort component projection” Population Studies.

Babies left on hold
Fear of getting fired has forced many couples in Europe and the US to abandon plans to have babies.
The uncertain economic climate since the crash in 2008 brought to an end steady increases in brith rates that were seen in almost all European countries since around 2000, according to a report on birth rates in rich countries.
Many factors influence birth rates, "but a main one is economic uncertainty", says Vegard Skirbekk of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, one of the authors of the report (Population and Development Review, DOI: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00411.X).
Recovery may be slow. "Even if you have an economic boom, it could take time before there's enough confidence, secure enough jobs and high enough salaries for fertility rates to recover," he says.

Sobotka, T., Skirbekk, V., and D. Philipov. 2011. Economic recession and fertility in the developed world. Population and Development Review 37(2), June 2011: 267-306.
The global economic recession of 2008–2009 has been followed by a decline in fertility rates in Europe and the United States, bringing to an end the first concerted rise in fertility rates in the developed world since the 1960s, according to research published today. The 2008–2009 global economic recession, the first major recession since that caused by the oil shocks of the 1970s, brought a sudden trend reversal to the previous pattern of rising fertility rates in several highly developed countries, including Spain and the United States. A larger group of countries including England and Wales, Ireland, Italy, and Ukraine experienced stagnation of fertility rates, following a decade of generally rising fertility after 1998 (see figure below). The study found that individual reactions to the recession vary by sex, age, number of children, education level, and migrant status. Highly educated women react to employment uncertainty by adopting a ‘postponement strategy,’ especially if they are childless. In contrast, less-educated women often maintain or increase their fertility under economic uncertainty. The patterns differ for men—those with low education and low skills face increasing difficulty in finding a partner or in supporting their family and often show the largest decline in first child birth rates.
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Skirbekk, V., Caron Malenfant, É., Basten, S., and M. Stonawski. 2011. The religious composition of the Chinese Diaspora, focusing on Canada. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming.

Skirbekk, V., Stonawski, M., KC, S., and A. Goujon (contributing authors). 2010. The Future of the Global Muslim Population. Projections for 2010-2030. Pew Forum Report.
This report, first in a series of estimates and projections of the world’s major religions, presents forecasts of the worldwide Muslim population at the country level. Globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades – an average annual growth rate of 1.5% for Muslims, compared with 0.7% for non-Muslims. The projections presented in this report follow a mutlistate cohort-component method, which starts with a baseline population divided into religious groups by age and sex. The religious composition is projected into the future by adding likely gains – new births (under the assumption that religious affilliation is intergenerationally transmitted) and immigrants – and subtracting likely losses – deaths and emigrants.(Report widely discussed in the media, including CNN, New York Times, and The Economist)
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Skirbekk, V., Goujon, A., and E. Kaufmann. (2010). Secularism, Fundamentalism, or Catholicism? The religious composition of the United States to 2043. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49(2):293–310
If fertility and migration trends continue, Hispanic Catholics will experience rapid growth and expand from 10 to 18 percent of the American population between 2003 and 2043. Protestants are projected to decrease from 47 to 39 percent over the same period, while Catholicism emerges as the largest religion among the youngest age cohorts. Liberal Protestants decline relative to other groups due to low fertility and losses from religious switching. Immigration drives growth among Hindus and Muslims, while low fertility and a mature age structure causes Jewish decline. The low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of immigrants provide a countervailing force to secularization, causing the nonreligious population share to peak before 2043.
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Skirbekk, V., K. Telle, E. Nymoen and H. Brunborg. Retirement and mortality – Is there a real connection? 2010. In T. Salzmann, V. Skirbekk, M. Weiberg (eds.), Wirtschaftspolitische Herausforderungen des demographischen Wandels, in G. Doblhammer and J. W. Vaupel (eds.), Demografischer Wandel – Hintergründe und Herausforderungen, Reihe in VS-Research, VS-Publishing Company, Wiesbaden.

Engelhardt, H., Buber, I., Skirbekk, V., and Prskawetz, A. (2010). Social involvement, behavioural risks and cognitive functioning among older people. Ageing and Society 30:779–809 doi:10.1017/S0144686X09990626
We examine individual data for 11 European countries and Israel from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We find that all kinds of social involvement enhance cognitive functions, in particular in work. Moreover, behavioural risks such as physical inactivity, obesity, smoking or drinking were clearly detrimental to cognitive performance. Models for men and women were run separately. For both genders, all social involvement indicators associated with better cognitive performance. The results varied by countries, however, particularly the signs of the associations with a number of indicators of social involvement and behavioural risks.
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KC, S., Barakat, B., Goujon, A., Skirbekk, V., Sanderson, W., and W. Lutz. (2010) Projection of populations by level of educational attainment, age and sex for 120 countries for 2005-2050. Demographic Research 22: 383 - 472. Download PDF
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Last updated: 18 Jan 2012