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Minority-Majority Religious Group Differences in Fertility: A Propensity Score Matching Approach Applied to South Asia

Syeda Naz, East Tennessee State University
Mary Shenk, The Pennsylvania State University

Differential fertility among minority and majority religious groups has been widely studied in the literature. Despite the extensive number of studies, a propensity score matching approach has not been adopted yet to study religious differences in fertility in South Asia. In this paper we examine Hindu-Muslim differentials in fertility in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal using the latest rounds of national demographic and health surveys. We address the question of whether minority religious groups have differential fertility than majority religious groups, and use aspects of our methods to test support for three alterative hypotheses. Our results do not support the characteristics hypothesis that members of religious minorities have high fertility due to low education and low socioeconomic status. Our results do, however, support the particularistic theology hypothesis that Muslims have higher fertility than Hindus, irrespective of their majority or minority status. Lastly and most importantly, our results support the minority status hypothesis by showing that degree of minority status within a country or region matters for fertility outcomes—though the direction of the result varied across countries. Findings of higher fertility among minority religions in some contexts and lower fertility among minority religions in other contexts is consistent with predictions of different fertility motivations among minority groups in different sociopolitical contexts.

Keywords: Demography of religions , Politics and demography, Theory, Fertility and childbirth

See paper.

  Presented in Session 177. Ethnicity, Religion and Tribe: Sociocultural Influences on Demographic Behaviour