Welcome to our Research Project
Across the world, religious people have more children than their secular counterparts. In modern environments, the number of children in a family is inversely related to child success. Yet children born to religious parents often flourish. Why?
We are an international team investigating how religion impacts family size, child health and child success. Our research involves interviewing 8,500 participants about family, religion, support and health from across Bangladesh, India, Malawi, the Gambia, and the United States. This research is part of the ‘John Templeton Foundation’ and ‘Templeton Religion Trust’ funded project “The Evolutionary Dynamics of Religion, Family Size, and Child Success. Find more details about how the project is pre-registered on our Open Science Framework page.
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The Project
Core Team
Collaborators
News
Animation of our Research Idea
Animation of our Research IdeaBy Anne Cathrine PetersenWith good help and skills from external collaborators, we are now able to publish an animated movie illustrating our research idea.More news...
How does Religion Affect Maternal Fertility and Child Development
How does Religion Affect Maternal Fertility and Child Development By John Shaver John Shaver explains our latest paper in an article in This View of Life magazine. Read more here. You can also watch...
The Unwanted Natural Experiment: Reflections on Fieldwork while Waiting out a Pandemic
The Unwanted Natural Experiment: Reflections on Fieldwork while Waiting out a PandemicBy Richard SosisConducting ethnographic research consists of living and engaging with a community. It involves...
Funding & Collaborations
The project is a collaboration between anthropologists and demographers from four universities: University of Otago, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Connecticut. The project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and Templeton Religion Trust.