Religion and early fertility in the United States: changes during the second demographic transition

Abstract We assess how changes in early fertility varied among US women with different religious characteristics, and how the associations between religion and early fertility changed across birth cohorts from 1950 to 1993. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth, we examine the timing of nonmarital, marital, and overall first births through age 24. Results from life tables and discrete-time event history models reveal that increases in early nonmarital first births were smaller among women who attended religious services more frequently in childhood, whereas early marital births declined at similar rates irrespective of childhood religious service attendance. Because early births became increasingly nonmarital across birth cohorts, women who attended religious services more frequently in childhood became less likely to have an early birth overall. Early fertility differences by religious tradition generally converged across cohorts, although women raised conservative Protestant continued to have higher likelihoods of early birth relative to women raised in other religious traditions net of controls. Women who were raised nonreligious remained similar to conservative Protestants in their likelihood of nonmarital childbearing across cohorts and became statistically similar to them in their overall early births in the latest cohort. Changes in early fertility during the second demographic transition therefore varied by religious background and reshaped the relationship between religion and early fertility.