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Religiousness and fertility among European Muslims.(DATA AND PERSPECTIVES)
Publication: Population and Development Review
Publication Date: 01-DEC-07
Author: Westoff, Charles F. ; Frejka, Tomas
fertility in 13 European countries is higher than that for other women, but in most countries with trend data the differences are diminishing over time. Fertility varies by country of origin of immigrants. Various European survey data show that higher proportions of Muslim women are married and their commitment to traditional family values is greater than among other women. Muslim women are more religious than non-Muslim women and religiousness is directly associated with fertility. Among Muslim women, religiousness and commitment to family values are equally important for fertility, while for non-Muslim women religiousness is much less important.
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ACCORDING TO POPULAR belief, the fertility of Muslims in Europe is much higher than that of non-Muslims. This belief stems, at least in part, from the general impression of high fertility in Muslim countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. The notion of high Muslim fertility in Europe fuels concerns about Muslims' increasing immigration, growing numbers, and resistance to assimilation into European society, leading to dire predictions that Muslims are "about to take over Europe" (Lewis 2007) or that "much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries" (Steyn 2006).
This analysis first compares Muslim and non-Muslim fertility in Europe and examines how the fertility of both populations is changing over time. It then focuses on the influence of religiousness on fertility to determine whether Muslims in Europe are more religious than non-Muslims and, if so, whether this influences their fertility. Table 1 provides an overview of the Muslim population in Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Of the estimated 35-45 million Muslims in Europe, around 15 million reside in Western Europe, close to 8 million in Central and South-Eastern Europe, and between 15 and 20 million in the Russian Federation. The estimates are reasonably accurate for many of the smaller countries, as well as for Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands. For other countries, including France, Spain, and Italy, there is considerable uncertainty about the estimated size of the Muslim population. The numbers of illegal immigrants in these countries, many of whom are presumed to be Muslim, are unknown. Also, statistical practices and definitions differ from one country to another so that the data in Table 1 can be considered useful only for basic orientation.
Almost all of the Muslims in Central and Eastern Europe live in the Balkans. (Kosovo, although formally part of Serbia, is listed as a country in Table 1.) This part of Europe belonged to the Ottoman Empire for many centuries, and the countries gained independence during the nineteenth century. The Muslims are mostly autochthonous populations that had converted to Islam or are of Turkish descent. The large numbers of Muslims in the Russian Federation are not immigrants. They live in areas where the Muslim faith has been prevalent for centuries: in Tatarstan, Bashkiria, the Northern Caucasus, and the Volga region.
The majority of Muslims in Western Europe immigrated after World War II. The postwar economic reconstruction and economic boom of the 1950s, 1960s, and early I970s could absorb considerably more labor than was domestically available. The host countries later allowed the workers to be joined by family members (Munz 2003; Peach 2006; Tribalat 2004). Most of the immigrants were young at the time of arrival and had their children in the countries of immigration (1) (Andersson 2004; Toulemon 2006). The 1990s witnessed an influx of Muslims fleeing persecution, interspersed with migrants seeking economic betterment (Munz 2003; Peach 2006).
In the first wave, late 1940s-1970s, the two principal streams of immigration to Western Europe were from (a) countries of the erstwhile colonial empires, mainly the Indian sub-continent, the Caribbean, Indonesia, and Northern Africa; and (b) Southern Europe, the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and Turkey. Immigrants to France came mostly from North Africa--Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia--and also from Turkey. Most British Muslims originated in Pakistan and India, with smaller numbers from Bangladesh, Turkey, and Arab and North African countries. Most Muslims in Germany came originally from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia. Because much of this immigration took place during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, large proportions of present-day Muslims are second- and third-generation descendants. For instance, according to the 2001 census just under half (46 percent) of the Muslim population in the United Kingdom was British-born (Peach 2006).
Many refugees and asylum seekers of the 1990s came from Bosnia and Kosovo (as a result of the Balkan wars), as well as from Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.
Differences between Muslim and non-Muslim fertility
Methodological issues
Three types of data permit the analysis of fertility differentials by religious affiliation; however, very often one has to rely on crude estimates. Furthermore, in each case the data are not as detailed as needed for a thorough analysis over time and by cohort and age of mother.
Few European countries collect data on religious affiliation in population censuses and vital registration systems (Brown 2000). It is even more exceptional to find fertility data by religious denomination. Where these data are at hand, they provide relatively reliable indicators of religious fertility differentials and their evolution over time.
Many countries collect data on immigrants, classified either by country of origin, which is similar to foreign-born, or by nationality or citizenship. To be of foreign nationality or foreign citizenship is substantively similar, yet different countries use different terminology. The distinction between foreign-born immigrants and those with foreign citizenship or nationality is that the former contain all immigrants from other countries, whereas the group of foreign nationals or foreign citizens does not contain persons who have been naturalized. Because naturalization laws and practices differ between countries, the comparability of groups of immigrants between countries may be compromised, but it is not possible to determine the extent of the bias. In practically all countries the descendants of immigrants tend to be included in the estimates of immigrants.
Various measures of fertility are available: children ever born, total period fertility rates (TFR), and completed cohort fertility. Data on children ever born, based on population censuses, are of reasonably good quality. TFRs are calculated and estimated in different ways, some more reliable than others.
We make the simplified assumption that all women who immigrated from countries with overwhelmingly Muslim populations are of the Islamic faith. Throughout the article the terms "Muslim" and "Islam" are used interchangeably to denote adherence to the Islamic faith. In the tables we rely on whatever designation was used in the national source.
Countries with data on religious affiliation
Countries that collected data by religious denomination are shown in Table 2. According to data derived from the 2001 Austrian census, Muslim women had a total fertility rate of 2.3 births per woman, compared to a TFR of 1.3 for Roman Catholic women, who comprised 75 percent of the female population. In 2001 Muslim women had an average of one child more than women of other religions. This differential was smaller, however, than ten or 20 years earlier. While the share of Muslim women in Austria increased from 0.9 to 4.6 percent between 1981 and 2001, their TFR declined from 3.1 to 2.3 and the absolute TFR differential between Muslim and other women also declined. The proportionate differences between TFRs of women of different religions remained stable.
The other countries in Table 2 have data either on children ever born or on completed cohort fertility. In Bulgaria, Muslim women, who comprised 12 percent of the female population, had an average of 1.6 children ever born, compared to 1.3 children ever born to Eastern Orthodox women, who constituted 83 percent of the population. Data permit estimates of completed fertility for certain cohorts. Orthodox women born around 1940, 1950, and 1960 had stable completed fertility around 1.8 births per woman. Completed fertility of Muslim women was higher. In the 1937-41 cohort their fertility was 2.9 births per woman, a difference of 1.1 births. Unlike the Orthodox, Muslim cohort fertility was declining and the differential was narrowing; in the 1957-61 cohort Muslim women had only 0.5 births more than Orthodox women.
According to the 2001 census in Croatia, Muslim women (about 1 percent of all women) had 1.8 children ever born compared to 1.6 for Roman Catholic women, who belonged to the dominant religion.
In Slovenia, Muslim women comprised about 2.4 percent of the female population, with completed fertility of the cohorts born in the late 1950s and early 1960s estimated at 2.0-2.2 births per woman. Completed fertility of Roman Catholics, the principal religion, was estimated at 1.9-2.0 births per woman for the same cohorts. The fertility of Catholic women had been stable from one generation to the next. Among women born around 1930, Catholic completed fertility was 2.2 births per woman, moderately declining to slightly below 2.0 for the cohorts of the 1950s and early 1960s. Muslim women of the younger cohorts of the early 1960s had significantly lower fertility than their mothers. The Muslim cohort born around 1930 had completed fertility of 4.7 births compared to about 2.1 births per woman of the 1960s cohorts.
In Ukraine in 2003, the population of Islamic faith was less than one percent of the total, and the number of children ever born (1.
was slightly higher than for women of other religions.
Countries with data on immigrants by country of origin or on foreign-born immigrants
Table 3 contains countries with data on immigrants with known countries of origin or with data on foreign-born immigrants. Most female immigrants in France, presumably of Islamic faith, came from North Africa, mainly from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia as well as from Turkey. Their TFRs in the 1990s were higher than the TFR of native French women by 0.9 to 1.5 births per woman. (2)
In the Netherlands in 2005, the TFR of immigrant women born in Morocco was 2.9 births per woman and that of women born in Turkey was 1.9 births, compared to 1.7 among native Dutch women. Fertility of women born in Morocco and in Turkey declined steeply over the past 15 years, whereas the TFRs of the native Dutch changed only moderately. Fertility of Muslim women in 2005 continued to exceed that of Dutch women, but the differential had narrowed. For women of Turkish origin the differential had almost disappeared: it declined from 1.6 births per woman in 1990 to 0.2 in 2005.
Muslim women in Norway came from a large number of countries and together amounted to about 2.5 percent of the female population. Their fertility differed significantly by country of birth. In the period 1997-98 the TFRs ranged from 1.6 births per woman born in Bosnia and Herzegovina to 5.2 for Somalia-born women. For the majority of Muslim women, fertility was considerably higher than that of native Norwegian women.
The England and Wales panel in Table 3 lists foreign-born women from India and from Pakistan and Bangladesh, with only the latter group assumed to be of the Islamic faith. (3) The TFR of Islamic women from Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1996 was 4.9 births, compared to 1.7 among native-born women, a difference of 3.2 births. Women born in India had a TFR of 2.2, which was higher by 0.5 births than that of native-born women. Among both groups of foreign-born women, fertility had declined considerably between 197i and 1996 and thus the differentials also became smaller. Nonetheless, even in 1996 the fertility of Pakistani and Bangladeshi women was roughly three times higher than that of native-born women.
Countries with data on foreign citizenship or foreign nationality
Table 4 provides an overview of fertility differentials for countries that register immigrants by citizenship or foreign nationality. About 3.5 percent of the Belgian population was of the Islamic faith early in the twenty-first century. Most of the immigrants came from Turkey and Morocco. In 1994 their fertility was more than twice that of women of Belgian nationality. The usual pattern of immigrants' declining fertility holds. The TFR differential declined from 3.4 to 1.8 births per woman between 1981 and 1994 for women of Turkish nationality, and from 4.2 to 2.4 for Moroccan nationals.
In Germany, Turkish immigrants constitute a large proportion of foreign citizens. Their TFR declined from 4.4 births per woman in 1970 to 2.4 in 1996. The differential thus fell from 2.4 to 1.0 birth per woman.
Nationals of the former Yugoslavia formed a sizable proportion of immigrants in Switzerland, (4) but it is questionable what proportion of them were of the Islamic faith. This is the single group of immigrants whose fertility has not followed the usual pattern of decline over time. On the other hand, Turkish nationals in Switzerland fit the usual pattern of decline. Their TFR fell from 3.4 births per woman in 1981 to 1.9 in 1997. This was 0.6 births above the TFR of Swiss nationals.
Early in the twenty-first century Italy still had a relatively modest proportion of Muslim citizens, estimated at 1.4 percent of the total population. They came mainly from Northern Africa and Albania, and their TFRs were between double and triple that of Italian citizens.
Aihe: Religiousness and fertility among European Muslims (Luettu 7175 kertaa)