The Transition to Parenthood: The Effects of Fertility on Religious and Cultural Values (with Raphael Corbi and Natália Trigo)
September 16, 12:45 am - 2:00 pm
Francisco Costa
(FGV)
“The Transition to Parenthood: The Effects of Fertility on Religious and Cultural Values (with Raphael Corbi and Natália Trigo)”
This paper shows that the transition to parenthood shapes adults’ religious and social values. Using panel and pseudo-panel event-study designs for the United States and Europe, we document a persistent increase in religious engagement and traditionalist values following the birth of a first child. This shift is not merely a change in social participation (belonging) but also extends to private beliefs and identity (believing), suggesting an elasticity in deep-preference parameters that challenges the canonical assumption of adult preference stability. To assess the magnitude of these effects, we ask how much of the observed decline in religious engagement can be attributed to falling fertility. A counterfactual decomposition indicates that the secular decline in fertility accounts for, on average, 12.5 percent of secularization in the West over the past half-century.