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Comment by othello | Hacker News Reader

What do you make of France, which with Ireland has the highest fertility rate in Europe (2.01 in 2010 [1]), while Catholicism can hardly be described as thriving there: 4.5% of French people go to mass at least once a week [2].

Social policies such as benefits for families with two or more kids and low-cost, widely available day-care centers for children under 3 that allow women to work and have kids sound far more important to me than any "residual Catholic natalism".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France#Demographics

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France#Religion

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The laws of France make it notoriously difficult to gather data on the correlation between religion and fertility, but the best available studies show that in France "[t]he estimated fertility of a woman assisting [religious] offices every week is 24% higher that the expected fertility of a woman who never assist to offices."

http://ideas.repec.org/p/mse/cesdoc/v08089.html

There used to be a saying among French Catholics: "If the traditionalists win, then the liturgical language of France will be Latin. If they lose, it will be Arabic."

Muslim immigration into France accounts for the high fertility.

This is horseshit.

he birthrates of Muslim women in Europe have been falling significantly for some time. In the Netherlands, for example, the TFR among Dutch-born women rose between 1990 and 2005 from 1.6 to 1.7. In the same period for Moroccan-born women in Holland it fell from 4.9 to 2.9, and for Turkish-born women in Holland from 3.2 to 1.9. In Austria, the TFR of Muslim women fell from 3.1 to 2.3 from 1981 to 2001. In 1970 Turkish-born women in Germany had on average two children more than German-born women. By 1996 the difference had fallen to one child and has now dropped to 0.5. These sharp falls reflect important cultural shifts, which include the impact of universal female education, rising living standards, the effect of local cultural norms and availability of contraception.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Walker/2008/04/30/Walke...

http://rfmcdpei.livejournal.com/408410.html http://historyandfutility.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/why-eurab...

The post you're replying to argues that Muslim immigration has raised fertility rates, and your numbers confirm that opinion. Even the falling Muslim fertility rates, after 15 years, that you mention are far above the "native" rates (2.9 as opposed to 1.7 in Holland, and you call the idea that Muslims raise fertility rates "horseshit"?!). The rates that you cite for Germany show a Muslim population that, even after 40 years, is growing at a rate of 20+% per generation, whereas the "native" population is declining.

To this decades-old immigration that is still growing strong, we must add recent immigrants, who are much more religious and have much higher fertility rates.

zeteo Muslim immigration into France accounts for the high fertility.

The second development to note is that INED, France's National Institute of Demographic Studies, has done some detailed research and concluded that France's immigrant population is responsible for only 5 percent of the rise in the birthrate and that France's population would be rising anyway even without the immigrant population.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Walker/2008/04/30/Walke...

France is an interesting and peculiar case, with lots of natalist policies and with laws impeding the collection of statistics based on religion and ethnic origin. I'd love to see the original INED study, though, if you have a link.

I can't, unfortunately. Here's the INED publications webpage

http://www.ined.fr/en/resources_documentation/publications/d...

It might be one of the "Recent Demographic Developments in France"

The quote uses terms like "Dutch-born" and "German-born." Do those terms include only Christian women who are ethnically Dutch or German? Or do those terms also include the second generation of women born in Holland and Germany, whatever their religion or ethnicity?

I just read the linked article at UPI. It is unclear on the matter.

It means born in the country. If they had meant Dutch or German ethnic they would have said so. So it's referring to people on the short road to assimilation.

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