Fertility, Religion and Religiousness in European Muslim Populations

Charles Westoff, Princeton University

This research builds on our 2006 PAA presentation, “Religion, Religiousness and Fertility in Europe and the U.S.” which focused on how much higher European fertility might be if women in Europe were as religious as women in the U.S. Data availability is limited for Muslims in Europe, where the most extensive source will be data on country of origin (available for at least seven countries). An important source of data, however, is sample survey data, mainly the successive waves of the World Values Survey and the European Social Surveys. The main focus is to determine the extent to which the higher fertility of the Muslim populations, documented in the paper, can be attributed to strong attachments to religion. Preliminary findings suggest that this is part of the explanation, with the other part being stronger traditional family values among Muslim women.