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.
Find your way around
The Project
Core Team
Collaborators
News
My Neighbors are Nicer Than I Am
My Neighbors are Nicer Than I AmBy Richard SosisRivka opened our front door, walked up the stairs into our living room and announced “My mother said I had to come over for a timeout.” We knew this...
Now Hiring Three Postdoc Positions
Now Hiring Three Postdoc PositionsWe are now advertising the following three postdoc positions:Primarily working with PI Dr John Shaver with fieldwork in West Kiang, The Gambia. To those interested...
Planning the First Project Meeting
Planning the First Project MeetingOn the 31st of October and 1st of November our team met up in Boston to lay the groundwork for our project. The central outcomes of this meeting were: ...
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.