Buddhism and childbearing in Asia

Buddhism is the dominant religion in a number of Asian countries and the most common religion in some of the countries with the lowest fertility levels in the world. The relationship between Buddhism and childbearing has received comparatively limited scholarly attention so far. Studies of of childbearing in other religions tend to find that religiosity is positively related to fertility.
After considering Buddhist teachings regarding contraception, family formation, and childbearing ideals, we do not find evidence that Buddhism is inherently pronatalist. Our hypothesis is the Buddhist affiliation and commitment level is not associated with higher fertility.
We analyze patterns of childbearing among Buddhists in several Asian countries: India, Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, Mongolia, Thailand, Japan and South Korea. We investigate how Buddhist affiliation (and religiosity when available) related to the number of children ever born, controlling for education, urbanization, union status and age. Our preliminary empirical results suggest that in many countries, Buddhist affiliation is not associated with significantly higher fertility. For instance in Thailand, Buddhism is negatively associated with fertility (among women aged 25-49), also when education and region is controlled for.