At the beginning of summer, I learnt about the publication of a new book on demographics. It’s called “After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People” by American economists Dean Spears and Michael Geruso. They suggested that we start a conversation about population decline (and how to reverse it). A few weeks later, I visited Chengdu, China. Asking about the political landscape in this part of the world, low fertility rates were the topic of choice of the first few conversations I had. I mention this because it illustrates how informed views on demographics are simultaneously shifting in many places.
For a long time, low fertility rates were seen as necessary for development. Talk of a demographic dividend is still ripe. And economists had their own theory: the quality-quantity trade-off whereby the newborn child would negatively affect their older siblings’ lifetime earnings by diluting human capital investment. It’s a persistent story and one that I see with scepticism. If there was a quality-quantity trade-off, shouldn’t only children dominate first-borns in terms of outcomes as more resources are available to guarantee their success in life? A meta-analysis of empirical studies, by contrast, shows no rivalry, no differences in outcomes between only children and first-borns (also here).
Shakespeare once said: The world must be peopled. Many of today’s economists seem to agree. Or at least they understand compounding. 4 children born for every 3 women (one childless woman and two women with two children each) means that the population more than halves every two generations. Our pipeline of talent, imagination, joy and GDP-enhancing innovations is dwindling. This, however, is happening globally, and especially so in the most developed parts of the world. (see this great presentation by Jesús Fernández-Villaverde) If you haven’t noticed yet, chances are you live in an urban agglomeration whose younger ranks have been swelled by a now-depopulated countryside.
Why do so many more young people choose not to start families? Why is the average family size shrinking? And why is it shrinking everywhere? In countries with generous parental support (e.g., northern European welfare states). And those without it (e.g., the Americas). The economic profession by its own admission has no clue. Watching Michael Geruso present the book at Wellesley College, I heard him say that those who say with certainty why this is happening are probably wrong. In a way, that is funny. Because when Dean Spears reached out to interest me in the book, the first thing I did was to offer an explanation. I then wrote: “I think that fertility declined in sync with a generation exchanging their Judeo-Christian heritage for an economic project (house, career, status).”
In hindsight, I wish I had expressed myself more clearly. Especially so, because my theory is simple. People have children because they pray.
How Prayer Changes Us
If you do not pray, it will be hard for me to explain why I think this way. Prayer is one of the most powerful things that happens to me during the day. Sometimes the urge arises suddenly as in the silent prayer during a conversation that has taken a serious turn: “Lord, let me speak with love, not pride”. Or “grant me patience” when demands pile up as they so frequently do with children. Prayer can be triggered by sad news, as in personal loss. Or when the Colombian people rejected peace in a referendum. Only God could soften the hearts of the Colombian people so that they could forgive past evil and reconcile. Prayer is a human instinct. And much like other instincts—dance movements, a mathematical proof by contradiction, musicianship, or the perfect serve in tennis—it is learnt gradually. To what effect?
Mother Teresa explained the transformational role of prayer this way:
The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is peace.—Mother Teresa
In the language of economics, Mother Teresa highlights two distinct channels through with prayer operates. First, prayer changes preferences. Before we pray, our actions may reveal that we prefer bundle A over bundle B. After we pray, no more. The direction of this change is from self- to other-regarding: Prayer transforms the faithful to desire a life in the service of others. This is not just a theological belief but also a theory with Popperian predictions: If true, prayer ought to increase many forms of service to others—volunteering, charitable giving, care for elderly relatives. I invoke the theory in this post on demographics, because raising children represents one particularly happy form of service (although by far not the only one). There is suggestive evidence, I think, that the transformation caused by prayer shows up in the data. The faithful work fewer market hours (both Barro, McCleary (2003) and their critical appraisal in Durlauf, Kourtellos, Tan (2012) show that GDP growth negatively correlates with religious attendance), but a greater number of non-market hours caring for others. This very shift toward non-market activities—including childrearing—may be precisely what matters for fertility. Said in a more perfect way, if we pray that God make us an instrument of his divine love, perhaps this has empirically measurable consequences?
Second, Mother Teresa suggests that prayer, through faith, changes subjective beliefs. If God has created the world so that us humans could share in his wisdom, goodness, and being, then his creation could impossibly lack what us humans need to thrive. A person of faith may fear catastrophic events, but protected by God’s grace, does not place high probabilities on them. Only an atheist could have written a book such as the ‘population bomb.’ A person of faith would have placed their trust in divine providence instead.
Summer has passed since I offered my explanation. Since, I have wondered whether I should state my case so boldly. First, because I broke Burr’s rule: smile more and talk less (see here for more free advice from the Hamilton musical). Second, because theological explanations are bound to be rejected by social scientists. Where is the empirical evidence that prayer will re-people our nurseries and kindergartens, rejuvenate family celebrations and give new life to the many dying villages? If I repeat the thesis now, then out of Popperian instincts: As to propose it as a hypothesis that social scientists should test.
The Rise of Prayerlessness in Europe
Data on the frequency of prayer is not hard to come by, at least as far as Europe since the 2000s is concerned. The European Social Survey, run every two years since 2002, holds many answers. To track the fertility rate, I computed, for each surveyed country (that’s the EU, Switzerland, Norway, UK and Israel) and for each of the 11 surveys in between 2002 and 2024, the share of 15-45 year old women (that is women of fertile age) among survey respondents who reported that they never pray.
The descriptive statistics reveal a recent rise of irreligiosity in Western but not in high-growth Eastern Europe. In 2002, there were only three countries where only a minority of 15-45 year-old females prayed: Denmark, Czech Republic and—just barely—France. Everywhere else, the majority prayed: Prayer was widespread in the Protestant Nordic countries, especially so in Finland. Likewise, supermajorities of at least 2/3 of young women reported praying in the traditionally Catholic countries of Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Austria and (part-Catholic) Germany. 20 years later, and those supermajorities only exist in Ireland. Iceland is the only Nordic country where a majority of females aged 15-45 still prays. Prayerlessness is now a majority-phenomenon among young females in the UK and Belgium. Germany and Spain are near the tipping point.
The rise in prayerlessness is surprising and warrants further investigation. Why deprive oneself of hope? Individuals’ personal religiosity correlates with various measures of wellbeing, happiness and mental (and, in some instances, physical) health (see for instance here or here). Religiosity also correlates with childbirth. In the European Social Survey, respondents do not report the number of own children. The survey does however collect information on the number of children in the household. Looking at 35–50-year-olds only in the latest 2023/24 survey, we may infer a very rough estimate of fertility rates. Women who pray daily have 0.2 more children than those who never pray. When averaging across both men and women, the difference rises to 0.3. In scripture, the link between childbirth and prayer is foundational: Abram yearns for a child from his wife Sarai. But his desire is only granted once, via circumcision, he places his trust in the Lord. There is no circumcision in Christianity, but the relationship of trust endures. To have faith in Christ means that the individual comes to accept God’s benevolent stewardship in their life. Thy will be done.
Does Prayer Explain Fertility Differences?
To study the link between the decline in fertility and rising prayerlessness in western Europe since the early 2000s, I ran a regression on a panel data set that looked at actual fertility rates (World Bank). The data tracks country fertility rates, GDP-per-capita, and the share of 15-45 year-old women who report that they never pray.
In the empirical analysis, I combined this ESS data with country level data on fertility and GDP-per-capita from the World Bank. My regression employs two-way fixed effects regression as to control for both country-specific and time-specific unobserved heterogeneity. Omitting country fixed effects would have failed to account for the fact that historical experiences across countries varied quite a bit: Communism and experience of war were disillusioning forces, discouraging prayer.
All told, the econometric specification takes the following form:
TFR_it = β₁(NeverPray_it) + β₂(log(GDP_it)) + α_i + γ_t + ε_it.
Here α_i captures time-invariant country characteristics and γ_t accounts for common temporal shocks. (Hausman test: χ² = 12.89, F = 5.18. Regarding R^2: 20.5% of within-country variation in fertility rates explained. The never pray coefficient is significant, p < 0.001).
The estimated coefficients are:
never_pray_pct log_gdp_per_capita
-0.0072236 0.4043836
These estimates are as the theory of the transformational role of prayer predicts. Countries where fewer women pray see fewer child births. Richer countries (higher log GDP-per-capita), meanwhile, see a greater number of child births. A 2% increase in GDP raises fertility by the same amount as a 1.1 pp increase in women of fertile age who pray. This suggests that economic development, when it occurs, may reduce some barriers to childbearing. But also, that faith is as—if not more—important than economic fundamentals in determining fertility rates.
A brief point on confounders: Most discussions of low fertility rates centre on socio-economic determinants of fertility: Urban migration, educational expansion, social welfare systems, and cultural shifts in gender roles. The ESS’s exclusive focus on 21st data is therefore: Europe’s economic and social structures were largely mature by 2000. The gender revolution in higher education was complete by the 1990s, as was urbanization. Nordic and Continental European welfare systems were established decades earlier. This makes the synchronized decline in both religious practice and fertility more difficult to explain through alternative channels.
Faith or Tradition?
Sympathetic observers with whom I’ve shared my results were quick to argue that higher fertility rates among the religious are plausible, however should be attributed to cultural norms linked to religiosity, not active religious practice. This is certainly possible. But how would we know? Polite society’s taboo not to talk about religion only ensures that the question remains unanswered.
Keynes famously argued that ideas change the course of history. I agree. Ideas are powerful. But only so if they are believed. A norm that lacks belief has the qualities of a decapitated chicken: it might keep on running for show. But don’t expect it to overcome any obstacles—such as the opportunity cost of parenthood. Indeed, one must be out of their mind to pursue parenthood just because a traditional norm tells you to. I am reminded of the title of a book on parenting: All joy, no fun. If you are not prepared for true joy, the lack of fun will bring great disappointment. Joy is reserved for those who are prepared to serve. Faithless countries with greater vote shares for conservative parties have certainly not experienced a baby boom as of late. As I see it, the association of faith and tradition has it all backwards. Deference to tradition is the exact opposite of faith in an active, living God. Rather: where the faithful do adhere to past wisdom, they do so out of discernment, not deference to past tradition
One further datapoint might lend support to this view: Running regressions that include the share of 15-45 year-old women who reported monthly or weekly attending a religious service at a place of worship yielded insignificant results. Collective worship (other than through facilitating individual prayer) is insignificant for explaining the TFR—irrespective of whether the regression further includes the share of never prayers or not. Perhaps this is driven by data issues: small samples and the small number of faithful attending collective worship makes it difficult to detect aggregate effects on TFR. More granular data is needed to decide this. Perhaps it is evidence that interior transformation through active prayer, rather than mere social participation, is what changes preferences toward service and childrearing. And yet the finding is puzzling: faith and collective worship do correlate after all. My sense is that the result is simply reflective of the dynamics of irreligiosity and demographic decline: Individuals stop worshipping with others before they stop praying. And loss of prayer precedes demographic decline. In today’s Europe, belief still exists outside of church pews. The body of the faithful, however, has disintegrated into many disjoint parts. Why? In the remainder of this post, I will attempt an answer.
Many Europeans (perhaps unknowingly) have grown up to become existentialists: we create our identities on a blank sheet of paper. In ‘existentialism is a humanism’ Sartre writes: “man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.” I sense that no generation that has felt this more strongly than mine, which came of age after the Cold War. When first conceived, such philosophy feels like freedom: It promises liberation from parental missteps, history’s errors and severs supposed obligations before citizenry and God. It is also redemptive: If we define ourselves, we need no longer call our selfishness as such. Our Augustinian brokenness is a construct, no longer caused by sin but imposed on us by an oppressive ideology. This is redemption without sacrifice. We are free. Seen through the lens of existentialism, prayer is as effective as meditation or a self-help group. It becomes an act of self-expression, self-creation. Part of the personal project of curating among the pleasures in life. The greatest prize that this philosophy offers is the aesthetic: sublime music, the sensual as in romantic passionate love, grandiose architecture as in temples of art, enriching culinary experiences, and observation of nature. The aesthetic is not a small prize. God’s creation and the wealth of human experience that may live within it truly is wonderful.
There existed a moment in my youth when the aesthetic experience—especially music—was all that I aspired to. I returned to faith, I believe, by discernment through the spirit. I perceived that the qualities of what is truly good and beautiful in life are not ordained or decided by us human beings. Rather, what is truly good and beautiful reveals itself within reciprocal relationships whose essence is love. The one who serves brings goodness upon the one served: as in the performance of music, the sharing of food, the housing of others, in teaching where students offer their attention to receive their teacher’s intellect. Nowhere has this become more apparent to me than in music: The secret of Bach’s music is not the rich harmonies but the dance. The secret of Mozart’s is expressing depth through the lightness of a child’s melody. Their music is a gift of love unto us—their listeners and performers—not an act of self-expression. Love makes us excellent without seeking appraisal. How is such love possible? In Genesis we learn: We are created in the image of God. We exist because of God’s abundant love. His love precedes Sartre’s blank paper conception of human existence. Later God affirms: ‘I have called you by name; you are Mine!’ Reading this, I am overcome by great relief and great clarity. If God created this world—you and me—because of love, then how can I not desire to serve that which he created in his image?
I cannot write well about these mysteries. It is only through music that I begin to fathom. This much I know: liberty was given to all people because God loves. This does not mean that we must create our own identity. Where such confusion arises, it does not promote good. By usurping the role of creator, we doubt that we need love. Faced by our own imperfections, we begin to doubt that pure love could exist. And when our project finally fails, we doubt that we deserve love. Only then, know that you are mistaken. We do not deserve. But we receive as a grace—through prayer. St. Paul writes: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.” As a social scientist, I’m in no position to recommend prayer. But as a person of faith, I pray that you do.
