Religiosity and demography events: a comparative study of European countries

We address the theoretical background of associations between religiosity and family formation and fertility behaviour and suggest empirical findings for 15 European countries using FFS data. We discuss briefly issues related to measurement of religiosity and direction of causality. The influence of religiosity on demographic behaviour comes through several links. First, religions promote a pronatalistic and family-oriented behaviour. Secondly, an important function of religiosity is to enable religious people to deal with contingent situations, like childbearing, by referring to the transcendent. Consequentially the level of uncertainty decreases. Third, the embedding in religiosity-related social networks might lead to emotional stability and availability of practical aid and hence result in an enhanced sense of certainty. We used the following indicators to measure religiosity: religious affiliation (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox), self-assessed religiosity, and frequency of attending religious services. We applied logistic and ordinary regressions. The results indicate that religious people are more likely to leave home later, to have later their first intercourse, to have more children, to enter cohabitation as compared to non-religious people. We present country comparisons. The findings point to a wide range of topics that need further research.