Cultural Inheritance and Male and Female Fertility

Taking a coevolutionary approach, this chapter examines how cultural inheritance affects male and female fertility. The coevolutionary approach argues that similar to genes, cultural traits inherited from parents rather than other non-parental sources lead to a greater resemblance in evolutionary outcome between parents and offspring. If the fertility transition is considered as part of the evolutionary process, then it is expected that the fertility outcome of offspring and parents are more similar if offspring inherit cultural traits directly from parents. Following this rationale, in the regime of declining fertility, offspring who inherit cultural traits from parents are expected to have a higher fertility. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) Cycle 6, this chapter investigates the capability of the coevolutionary theory in explaining male and female fertility. The results show that if religion is considered as a cultural trait, then the cultural inheritance hypothesis proposed by coevolutionary theory is generally supported by empirical evidence. That is, individuals who reported the same religious affiliations as those of their parents tend to have a greater number of children than those who reported different religions than those of their parents. Such a positive effect of cultural inheritance on fertility does not vary by gender. These findings contribute to the existing fertility literature in several aspects, which will be discussed in the conclusion and discussion part of the chapter.