Volume 32 - Article 1 | Pages 1–28  

Is Buddhism the low fertility religion of Asia?

By Vegard Skirbekk, Marcin Stonawski, Setsuya Fukuda, Thomas Spoorenberg, Conrad Hackett, Raya Muttarak

Abstract

Background: The influence of religion on demographic behaviors has been extensively studied mainly for Abrahamic religions. Although Buddhism is the world´s fourth largest religion and is dominant in several Asian nations experiencing very low fertility, the impact of Buddhism on childbearing has received comparatively little research attention.

Objective: This paper draws upon a variety of data sources in different countries in Asia in order to test our hypothesis that Buddhism is related to low fertility.

Methods: Religious differentials in terms of period fertility in three nations (India, Cambodia and Nepal) and cohort fertility in three case studies (Mongolia, Thailand and Japan) are analyzed. The analyses are divided into two parts: descriptive and multivariate analyses.

Results: Our results suggest that Buddhist affiliation tends to be negatively or not associated with childbearing outcomes, controlling for education, region of residence, age and marital status. Although the results vary between the highly diverse contextual and institutional settings investigated, we find evidence that Buddhist affiliation or devotion is not related to elevated fertility across these very different cultural settings.

Conclusions: Across the highly diverse cultural and developmental contexts under which the different strains of Buddhism dominate, the effect of Buddhism is consistently negatively or insignificantly related to fertility. These findings stand in contrast to studies of Abrahamic religions that tend to identify a positive link between religiosity and fertility.

Author's Affiliation

• Vegard Skirbekk - Folkehelseinstituttet (Norwegian Institute of Public Health), Norway EMAIL
• Marcin Stonawski - Center for Advanced Studies of Population and Religion (CASPAR), Poland EMAIL
• Setsuya Fukuda - National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan EMAIL
• Thomas Spoorenberg - United Nations, United States of America EMAIL
• Conrad Hackett - Pew Research Center, United States of America EMAIL
• Raya Muttarak - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

The future size of religiously affiliated and unaffiliated populations
Volume 32 - Article 27

Migration and demographic disparities in macro-regions of the European Union, a view to 2060
Volume 45 - Article 44

Demographic change and increasing late singlehood in East Asia, 2010–2050
Volume 43 - Article 46

The emergence of birth limitation as a new stage in the fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa
Volume 42 - Article 30

Forty years of fertility changes in the Sahel
Volume 41 - Article 46

Migration influenced by environmental change in Africa: A systematic review of empirical evidence
Volume 41 - Article 18

Fertility compression in Niger: A study of fertility change by parity (1977–2011)
Volume 39 - Article 24

Are daughters’ childbearing intentions related to their mothers’ socio-economic status?
Volume 35 - Article 21

On the masculinization of population: The contribution of demographic development -- A look at sex ratios in Sweden over 250 years
Volume 34 - Article 37

Reconstructing historical fertility change in Mongolia: Impressive fertility rise before continued fertility decline
Volume 33 - Article 29

When people shed religious identity in Ireland and Austria: Evidence from censuses
Volume 31 - Article 43

Reverse survival method of fertility estimation: An evaluation
Volume 31 - Article 9

A cross-country comparison of math achievement at teen age and cognitive performance 40 years later
Volume 31 - Article 4

Old age mortality in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia
Volume 29 - Article 38

Educational Differences in Divorce in Japan
Volume 28 - Article 6

Projection of populations by level of educational attainment, age, and sex for 120 countries for 2005-2050
Volume 22 - Article 15

Leaving the parental home in post-war Japan: Demographic changes, stem-family norms and the transition to adulthood
Volume 20 - Article 30

What can we learn from indirect estimations on mortality in Mongolia, 1969-1989?
Volume 18 - Article 10

Fertility trends by social status
Volume 18 - Article 5

Decomposing the change in labour force indicators over time
Volume 13 - Article 7

Most recent similar articles in Demographic Research

Educational trends in cohort fertility by birth order: A comparison of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland
Volume 51 - Article 36    | Keywords: birth order, cohort analysis, cross-national study, England, family size, fertility, Northern Ireland, parity, Scotland, Wales

Higher incomes are increasingly associated with higher fertility: Evidence from the Netherlands, 2008–2022
Volume 51 - Article 26    | Keywords: fertility, income, inequalities, Netherlands, parenthood

The short- and long-term determinants of fertility in Uruguay
Volume 51 - Article 10    | Keywords: fertility, panel data, stages of female reproductive life, time series, Uruguay

Religion and contraceptive use in Kazakhstan: A study of mediating mechanisms
Volume 50 - Article 21    | Keywords: contraceptive use, Generations and Gender Programme (GGP), Kazakhstan, mediation, religion, religiosity

The big decline: Lowest-low fertility in Uruguay (2016–2021)
Volume 50 - Article 16    | Keywords: adolescent fertility, birth order, fertility, Latin America, ultra-low fertility, Uruguay