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Title: Religions, Fertility, and Growth in South-East Asia

Author(s): David de la Croix and Clara Delavallade

Publication Date: January 2018

Keyword(s): Buddhism, Catholicism, education, indirect inference, Islam and Quality-Quantity Tradeoff

Programme Area(s): Macroeconomics and Growth

Abstract: We investigate the extent to which religions' pronatalism is detrimental to growth via the fertility/education channel. Using censuses from South-East Asia, we first estimate an empirical model of fertility and show that having a religious affiliation significantly raises fertility, especially for couples with intermediate to high education levels. We next use these estimates to identify the parameters of a structural model of fertility choice. On average, Catholicism is the most pro-child religion (increasing total spending on children), followed by Buddhism, while Islam has a strong pro-birth component (redirecting spending from quality to quantity). We show that pro-child religions depress growth in the early stages of growth by lowering savings, physical capital, and labor supply. These effects account for 10% to 30% of the actual growth gaps between countries over 1950-1980. At later stages of growth, pro-birth religions lower human capital accumulation, explaining between 10% to 20% of the growth gap between Muslim and Buddhist countries over 1980-2010.

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Bibliographic Reference

de la Croix, D and Delavallade, C. 2018. 'Religions, Fertility, and Growth in South-East Asia'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=12622