The future size of religiously affiliated and unaffiliated populations

Consequences of International Migration on the Size and Composition of Religious Groups in Austria

“…The presented scenarios confirm the power of demographic change on the slow-down of secularisation (Kaufmann 2010;Hackett et al 2015). The high-migration scenario leads to a 7 pp slower rise of the religiously non-affiliated group.…”

Secularism and Fertility Worldwide

“…Beyond its importance for the religious composition of the world population, the societal-level association between secularism and fertility is relevant to key fertility theories and may help account, in part, for below-replacement fertility. Rather than religious people becoming a smaller proportion of the world population, demographers have projected that because the nonreligious have fewer children they will make up a smaller proportion of the world population over time (Hackett et al 2015;Kaufmann 2010;Skirbekk, Kaufmann, and Goujon 2010;Stonawski et al 2015). This literature improves on secularization theory by highlighting how individual-level secularity limits fertility behavior and thus constrains secularization, but has thus far neglected potential impacts of societal-level secularity despite secularism being more than just an individual attribute.…”

“…Yet some have argued, based on patterns within economically advanced societies or mathematical modelling of group competition, that the unaffiliated will rise over time (Abrams, Yaple, and Wiener 2011;Bruce 2011). Secular ideas are popular in some societies and current patterns of religious switching advantage the unaffiliated, but demographers have suggested that the proportion of the world population that is nonreligious will peak and decline by the mid-twenty-first century (Hackett et al 2015;Kaufmann, Goujon, and Skirbekk 2012;Stonawski et al 2015). Why are researchers making predictions that counter the popular rhetoric of rising secularism?…”

“…The growth or decline of a religious group is a function of both exogenous (i.e., external) factors, such as religious switching, and endogenous (i.e., internal) factors, such as fertility (Hackett et al 2015;Hout 2016;Hout et al 2001;Kaufmann 2010;Scheitle, Kane, and Van Hook 2011). Secularization theory was based on exogenous change: factors external to religious groups, such as religious switching following exposure to new ideas and values, will cause shifts in the number of people in different religious categories.…”

“…Despite extant research on religious differences in fertility (Freedman, Whelpton, and Smit 1961;Jong 1965;Lenski 1961), this paradigm neglected important demographic forces that undermined secularization. Parental religion is the strongest determinant of children's religion (Iannaccone 1998), and individual nonreligious peopleatheists, agnostics, and those who simply have no religious preference or affiliation-tend to have fewer children than those with a religious affiliation (Hackett et al 2015;Hayford and Morgan 2008;Hout, Greeley, and Wilde 2001). 1 Even key architects of secularization theory, such as Berger (1967), came to recant what they had said about secularization following a resurgence and radicalization of religion (Berger 1999).…”