Is Buddhism the low fertility religion of Asia?

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 1 Columbia Aging Centre, Columbia University, U.S.A., E-Mail: [email protected]. 2 Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU), International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria. 3 Department of Population Dynamics Research, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan. 4 Demographic Statistics Section, Statistics Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. 5 Pew Research Center, U.S.A. 6 Centre for Economic Demography, Lund University, Sweden. 7 Cracow University of Economics, Poland. 8 Vienna Institute of Demography, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Skirbekk et al.: Is buddhism the low fertility religion of Asia? 2 http://www.demographic-research.org 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.