How does fertility relate to religiosity: survey evidence from Israel.

Abstract

This paper presents new evidence that Jews in Israel who are more religious also have higher fertility and lower rates of contraceptive use. The data used were drawn from an unpublished representative sample survey of male and female salaried workers in Israel in June 1968. Each of the respondents answered a questionnaire composed of some 150 questions relating to different areas of everyday life particularly those pertaining to the performance of religious observances. From these data 2 measures of religiosity were adopted: 1 stemming from the self-categorization by respondents of their religiosity; and the other measuring the amount of time (hours per year) devoted by respondents to religious observances. A table presents the results of 4 multiple regressions in which number of children was entered as the dependent variable to be explained and religiosity as an independent explanatory variable. The number of children rose with female religiosity under both definitions. Thus not only was fertility higher amongst very religious Jewish married women in Israel but the extent of religiosity acted as a continuous variable affecting the level of fertility. To hold constant the effect of other factors additional independent variables were included in the regressions. Number of children was negatively related to year of marriage as expected. The negative sign on the education variable and the positive sign on the education squared variable indicated that the relation between number of children and education rather than being linear was U-shaped. For the age variable the coefficient was significant and of the expected sign. Women originating from Europe-America had slignificantly fewer children than those born in Israel. A similar pattern emerged for the men. Positive coefficients were found on the religiosity variables although the difference between nonreligious and traditional respondents was not statistically significant. Of those respondents not using contraception the proportion that failed to do so for reasons that were basically religious in nature rose consistently with the level of religiosity in each case. Thus whereas for nonreligious women not using contraceptives only 2.3% did not do so for religious reasons; the proportion for traditional and religiously observant women rose to 11.7% and 59.0% respectively. The parallel proportions for men that did not use contraceptive methods because of religious reasons were 2.2% 8.1% and 46.6%.