Fertility rates are far below replacement in Southern Europe, averaging 1.4 lifetime children per woman. The unprecedented combination of low fertility and low female labor force participation challenges conventional theories of economic demography. Other factors such as increased education and reduced child mortality explain almost none of this recent fertility decline. The proposal provides evidence that a decline in Catholic religiosity since the 1960s has been a major cause of subsequent fertility decline in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland - a decline of over a child per woman since the mid 1970s. Moreover, our preliminary results imply that this decline was not primarily caused by religiously-induced change in preferences for children. Instead, institutional decline and social effects appear to be much more important, such as the loss of many child-friendly social services traditionally provided by Catholic communities, including schools, hospitals, day care, and social clubs. Reduced services were, in turn, linked to the large attrition of nuns and priests that followed the major reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s. In order to investigate the fertility effects of change in social services (both tangible and psychic) provided by Catholic communities, the PI's propose to merge data on fertility and economic variables with indicators of religiosity and social service provision in Catholic communities. This proposal presents the preliminary results, both from a panel of European countries and from a cross-section of recent Italian data. The project will greatly expand this analysis. ThePI's will obtain and analyze data for: Catholic religious communities in the 32 countries surveyed by the ISSP; regional Catholic communities in the U.S. and Canada; and religious communities in additional countries covered by the World Values Survey but not the ISSP. Broader Impacts Understanding how social service provision affects fertility may be critical to understanding fertility trends among European Catholics and to projecting European demographics over the next generation. Moreover, the implications extend beyond the half-billion residents of Europe or even the billion Catholics worldwide. The populations and leaders of less developed countries look to Europe and wonder whether increased prosperity and greatly female labor market participation inevitably imply greying populations and demographic decline. These inferences may not be warranted if, as we conjecture, rapid fertility decline in Catholic Europe is not so much due to economic development as it is due to the loss of Church-provided family-friendly social services. If the PI's conjecture is borne out by further analysis it has important public policy implications. Religious groups may strongly support social service provision in some times and places, but very different institutional arrangements may be required to support their continued provision in changing or different cultures. The PI's conclusions might therefore be important for any society facing rapid economic and social change, and especially for societies in which women are increasingly torn between labor market opportunities and the high shadow cost they impose on child care. That tension may be much greater the less support is available from religious communities, other social networks, markets, or governments.
