Church Attendance and Childbearing: Evidence from a Dutch Panel Study

Caroline Berghammer, Vienna Institute of Demography

Prior research finds that religious people in Europe have larger families than their non-religious counterparts. To date, however, there is a lack of evidence on the causality of this link. This analysis studies whether the frequency of church attendance influences a person’s childbearing behaviour on the one hand and whether having a child affects the parent’s level of church attendance on the other hand. It is based on data from five waves of a large-scale Dutch panel survey, which span a substantial part of the respondents’ reproductive period (1987–2006). Contrary to findings from the United States, the results suggest a one-way influence: the level of church attendance impacts future childbearing but having a child does not lead to a change in church attendance. The effect of the frequency of church attendance at different times in life on fertility is examined in detail.