Conservative Social Attitudes Correlate with Higher Fertility Across 72 Nations

A cross-sectional analysis in *Evolutionary Psychological Science* finds that individuals endorsing conservative social attitudes—right-wing ideology, higher religiousness, preference for religious partners, and lower support for gender equality—report more biological children. The link is modest compared with age, the strongest predictor, yet consistent across multinational sample.

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Researcher Janko Mededovic designed the study to fill a gap in evolutionary behavioral ecology where broader social attitudes have been understudied. The analysis used an available dataset on romantic love and mate preferences. After removing incomplete cases and countries with fewer than 100 respondents, the final sample comprised 78,754 participants from 72 countries, collected online in 2021 with paper surveys in Algeria and Morocco. About two-thirds of respondents were women.

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Participants with stronger right-wing ideology, higher religiousness, a preference for religious partners, and lower support for gender equality reported more children. The associations were stronger among women than men. Educational level moderated the effect: right-wing ideology predicted higher fertility among less educated participants but not among the highly educated. Country-level variation was notable, with the relationship reversing in a few nations.

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The results suggest that contemporary social attitudes may influence reproductive behavior, providing a possible mechanism for directional selection on cultural traits. Demonstrating systematic, modest correlations across diverse societies, the study encourages demographers to include attitudinal variables in fertility models. These insights may inform policy discussions on population trends and cultural change.

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Mededovic stresses that, despite limitations, the findings offer a “reasonable case that social attitudes deserve attention in research on fertility differences.” He adds that the patterns suggest relevance to behavioral evolution and calls for longitudinal studies to clarify causality.

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The analysis has constraints. Women and more educated participants are overrepresented, and average ages (31.5 years for men, 29.5 years for women) show many have not completed their reproductive years. The cross-sectional design precludes causal inference, and single-item attitude measures reduce reliability. Country-level heterogeneity also suggests national contexts shape the link, limiting universality. Future research should use longitudinal designs and balanced samples.

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Across the 72 nations, the magnitude of the attitude-fertility link differed markedly, and in a few countries the association reversed, indicating that national context can invert the pattern. The modest effect sizes and cross-sectional design leave causal direction unresolved.

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• “Mededovic found that conservative social attitudes were consistently linked with higher fertility.” — Janko Mededovic, Lead Author

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• “Participants who reported stronger right-wing ideology, stronger religiousness, stronger preference for religiousness in a romantic partner, and lower support for gender equality tended to report having more children.” — Janko Mededovic

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• “Right-wing ideology and lower support for gender equality were more strongly associated with fertility among women than men, suggesting that conservative attitudes may be especially tied to women’s reproductive outcomes in this dataset.” — Janko Mededovic

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• “Education further qualified the findings: right-wing ideology predicted higher fertility among less educated participants, but not among highly educated participants.” — Janko Mededovic

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