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Religious Affiliation and Fertility in a Sub-Saharan Context: Dynamic and Lifetime Perspectives

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Abstract

We use uniquely detailed data from a predominantly Christian high-fertility area in Mozambique to examine denominational differentials in fertility from two complementary perspectives—dynamic and cumulative. First, we use event-history analysis to predict yearly risks of birth from denominational affiliation. Then, we employ Poisson regression to model the association between the number of children ever born and share of reproductive life spent in particular denominations or outside organized religion. Both approaches detect a significant increase in fertility associated with membership in a particular type of African-initiated churches which is characterized by strong organizational identity, rigid hierarchy, and insular corporate culture. Membership in the Catholic Church is also associated with elevated completed fertility. We relate these results to extant theoretical perspectives on the relationship between religion and fertility by stressing the interplay between ideological, social, and organizational characteristics of different types of churches and situate our findings within the context of fertility transition and religious demographics in Mozambique and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Notes

  1. We are well aware of the continuing debate about definitions and classifications of African religious diversity, and especially of churches labeled as “African independent” or “African initiated” (Anderson 2001; Meyer 2004), but we use these conventional terms for simplicity.

  2. The total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have if she were to experience current age-specific fertility rates and were to survive through the end of her reproductive span.

  3. Following Stark and Finke (2000), we use switching to denote “shifts within religious traditions,” as different from conversions, or “shifts across religious traditions.”

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Grant # R01HD050175.

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Correspondence to Victor Agadjanian.

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Agadjanian, V., Yabiku, S.T. Religious Affiliation and Fertility in a Sub-Saharan Context: Dynamic and Lifetime Perspectives. Popul Res Policy Rev 33, 673–691 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-013-9317-2

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