The persistently high fertility of a North American population: A 25-year restudy of parity among the Ohio Amish

Abstract

Why do the North American Amish maintain high fertility when surrounding populations have nearly all completed the demographic transition? Using the same theoretical predictors and methods as a 1996 Population Studies paper, we explore fertility changes, specifically changes in mean parity, between 1988 and 2015 among one sizeable Amish population in Ohio. Findings suggest that wealth flow shifts (as measured by a decline in farming families) and institutional changes (reflected in Amish denominational gradations) help to explain a decline in mean parity from 5.3 to 4.85, while ideological pronatalism (represented by higher fertility among church leaders) helps to explain why fertility has not been more responsive to structural incentives to limit family size. While this restudy confirms the trend of a slow decline in Amish fertility, it also invites a more methodologically expansive inquiry into Amish fertility patterns.

Explaining Religious Revival in the Context of Long-Term Secularization

“…The Amish in America are a good example of the former. This highly religious group shows a stable fertility rate of between six and eight children per Amish woman, producing a much higher rate of natural increase than the rest of the population (Wasao et al 2021). Similarly, the high fertility of Israel's Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) population causes their growth rate to be four percentage points higher than that of any other social group in the country (Cahaner and Malach 2021).…”

What is driving the global decline of human fertility? Need for a multidisciplinary approach to the underlying mechanisms

“…Outside of family history, education and perceptions of modernity, other social factors determining fertility choices include maternal preferences for their offspring's reproductive behaviour ( 75 , 76 ), the assimilative adaptation of migrants ( 77 ), the impact of religious idealism ( 78 – 80 ), the importance of traditional cultural values and beliefs ( 81 , 82 ), the incidence of marriage ( 83 ), the changing pattern of divorce ( 84 ), ethnicity ( 85 ), and exposure to mass media ( 86 ). In addition, there has been a major cultural shift in our attitude towards childlessness, which is currently experienced by approximately 1 in 4 of women in modern industrialized societies but could dramatically increase in the future ( 87 – 89 ).…”

North America’s Amish-Mennonites adopt abroad: The ideologies and institutional conditions that cracked the homogeneity of an ethnic religion

“…The first is demographic. Though Amish-Mennonites position themselves as outreach-oriented, the components contributing to population increase are the same as the Old Amish: relatively high levels of natural births and offspring retention (Landing, 1970; Wasao et al, 2021). The other source of growth – converts – is low.…”