Studying the Impact of Religion on Fertility in Nineteenth-Century Canada

Abstract

A beta version of the machine-readable 1881 census of Canada is used to assess the efficacy of two proxy variables used to predict fertility: (1) the share of church seats held by various church denominations in an areal unit and (2) the proportion of children with biblical names. Weak evidence is found for both measures, although the article questions whether these relationships can be interpreted as evidence for the importance of religious liberalization as a factor in reducing fertility.