Religiosity and marital fertility among Muslims in Israel

Jona Schellekens; A’as Atrash

doi:10.4054/DemRes.2018.39.34

Volume 39 - Article 34 | Pages 911–926

Religiosity and marital fertility among Muslims in Israel

By Jona Schellekens, A’as Atrash

Date received:

25 Mar 2018

Date published:

24 Oct 2018

Word count:

2099

Keywords:

fertility, Islam, Israel, marital fertility, religiosity

DOI:

10.4054/DemRes.2018.39.34

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Abstract

Background: Mounting evidence suggests that religious couples tend to have an above-average preference for children. Most of the evidence comes from studies of Christian and Jewish populations. Much less is known about the relationship between religiosity and fertility among Muslims. So far, only a few studies have reported a positive relationship between religiosity and fertility among Muslims. None of these control for marital duration. Thus, it is not clear to what extent the relationship is a result of early marriage among more religious women.

Objective: This article tries to show that there is a relationship between religiosity and marital fertility among Muslims after controlling for marital duration.

Methods: Using survey data from Israel we model the relationship between religiosity and marital fertility in a discrete-time repeated events history analysis.

Results: We report a positive relationship between an objective measure of religiosity and marital fertility. If they tend to have an above-average preference for children, then we expect to observe less parity-dependent fertility control among religious couples. Our results confirm this. The effect of religiosity increases with parity.

Conclusions: As has been shown for Christians and Jews before, there also is a positive relationship between religiosity and marital fertility among Muslims.

Contribution: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to present evidence for a relationship between an objective measure of religiosity and marital fertility among Muslims, which controls for marital duration.