As countries around the world grapple with falling birth rates, a recent Washington Post essay explored the role religion might play in reversing the trend.
In a June 2 op-ed, columnist Shadi Hamid examined the dramatic decline in birth rates across much of the world, suggesting that the trend cannot be understood apart from broader changes in marriage, family formation, and religious participation.
The trend is already visible across much of the globe. Hamid noted that more than two-thirds of the world's countries now have fertility rates below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Countries as diverse as Mexico, Iran, Japan, South Korea, and China have all experienced significant declines, while Thailand's fertility rate has fallen to roughly 0.8 children per woman.
While population decline has occurred throughout history, the current situation is different, according to Hamid.
“What is unprecedented is that this time it will be due to natural causes, not some external event like disease, war or famine,” he wrote.
Hamid suggested that the effects of declining fertility may be felt not only in economic indicators but also in the health of communities and social institutions.
“Being married with children is a strong predictor of happiness, for men and women alike,” he said. “A society with fewer couples and fewer kids is a society that is more atomized, alienated, and, well, sad.”
Hamid acknowledged that researchers have yet to identify a single cause for declining fertility. While explanations ranging from economic pressures to social isolation have been proposed, he noted that broader changes in dating, marriage, and family formation have contributed significantly to falling birth rates.
“Could religion be part of the solution?” he asked.
He pointed to the role religious institutions have traditionally played in helping people build relationships, marry, and raise families, noting that faith communities continue to reinforce the importance of marriage and family life.
While acknowledging that religious groups have also experienced falling birth rates, Hamid argued that they may still offer important lessons for societies grappling with demographic decline.
“Religious communities do something that no government program has been able to replicate: They create the social conditions for family formation,” he wrote. “They provide networks of support for parents and, perhaps most importantly, offer a framework in which the sacrifices that children demand are not experienced as mere costs but as expressions of life's deeper purpose.”
Hamid said that religion's role in family formation is tied in part to the communities it fosters.
“Religion is one of the tried and trusted ways to help individuals become less me-centered and more other-centered — as well as happier,” he said.
According to Hamid, this is “a result of the faithful having a sense of transcendence and being socially embedded in institutions that value community and family.”
Hamid also cited evidence that religious Americans have significantly higher fertility rates than their nonreligious counterparts, and suggested that if the gap continues to widen, societies could become increasingly religious through “the sheer force of reproductive logic.”
The essay ultimately returned to the broader implications of population decline, which Hamid said remain easy to overlook because their effects have not yet fully materialized.
“For now, there are still a lot of people,” he wrote. “We are debating something that hasn't happened yet. But when it does happen, falling fertility will become the defining issue of our time.”