Do Abortion rate (legal, reported) and Religious attendance go together across countries?

Across 44 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.35, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.38.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

There are not enough years of data within countries to check this over time.

Does Abortion rate (legal, reported) cause Religious attendance?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Abortion rate (legal, reported) vs. Religious attendance

Holds up after adjusting for income

A country is not a person. Countries where more people are counted as belonging to this group also tend to differ on the other measure, and that is all. It does not follow that the people in the group are the people with the different score. Making that leap is called the ecological fallacy: reading a pattern across places as a fact about individual people. It is the most common misuse of this kind of data. Religion also varies strongly with region, history and national income, so much of what looks religious here is really those. That is what the adjusted figures are for. The religion shares are estimates for two years only, and the survey questions are asked in rounds that can be ten years apart.

Across 44 countries, Abortion rate (legal, reported) and Religious attendance rise and fall together at r = -0.35 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.40, q = 0.039, allowing for the many pairs tested).

Comparing countries across the middle half of religious attendance, 13.8% to 33.7% of respondents, abortion rate (legal, reported) is 3.45 per 1,000 women aged 15-49 lower at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 4.29 per 1,000 women aged 15-49.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.348p = 0.020 · 44 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.396p = 0.009 · likely range [-0.62, -0.11]

p, allowing for regions0.048standard error 0.090 · 3 regions

Check for luck (q)0.039across 14,952 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Abortion rate (legal, reported) · per 1,000 women aged 15-49link with income -0.03 · independent

Religious attendance · % of respondentslink with income -0.66 · high

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.348	0.020	44
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.383	0.010	44
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.396	0.009	44
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.430	0.004	44

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 44 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: -0.048 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.456 (without ALB) to -0.354 (without AZE). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: ALB (-0.060).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
Europe & Central Asia	38	-0.36

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	15	-0.35
Middle third	14	-0.36
Richest third	15	-0.54

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	31	-0.43

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.376 after dropping 2 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data

	per 1,000 women aged 15-49	% of respondents	Years
Azerbaijan AZE	29.1	13.9%	2024, 2022
Russian Federation RUS	28.2	16.3%	2013, 2022
Sweden SWE	15.7	9.65%	2024, 2022
France FRA	15	12.4%	2019, 2022
Mongolia MNG	14.8	14.1%	2024, 2022
Bulgaria BGR	14.2	17.3%	2021, 2022
Kazakhstan KAZ	13.8	32.8%	2021, 2022
New Zealand NZL	13.7	16.8%	2023, 2022
Georgia GEO	13.5	33.7%	2024, 2022
Norway NOR	13.3	11.8%	2011, 2022
United Kingdom GBR	13.2	16.1%	2016, 2022
Uruguay URY	12.9	13.3%	2022
Iceland ISL	12.8	8.48%	2018, 2022
Moldova MDA	12.7	27.8%	2023, 2010
Denmark DNK	12.1	6.48%	2015, 2022

United Nations Statistics Division, Demographic Yearbook, 2017 to 2024 editions: tables of marriages and crude marriage rates, of divorces and crude divorce rates, by urban/rural residence, and of legally induced abortions. Women aged 15 to 49 from the World Bank, World Development Indicators (CC BY 4.0).
Haerpfer, C. et al., World Values Survey; EVS, European Values Study

Sources

Abortion rate (legal, reported)

Legal abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-49

United Nations Statistics Division · UNdata terms of use · updated annual (each edition covers the latest five years)

Legal abortions reported to the UN Demographic Yearbook, per 1,000 women aged 15 to 49 (women of childbearing age, counted by the World Bank). Only countries where abortion is legal on broad grounds and the national count covers the whole country are included. That is mostly Europe, the former Soviet Union and a few others, such as Japan, Cuba and New Zealand. Countries whose counts cover only hospitals, only medical reasons or only complications are left out, and so is any year a footnote says is missing part of the country (several years for Italy). Abortions outside the official system, such as pills bought online, are not counted anywhere. So the figure is a floor, not a full count. Where abortion is banned, there is no figure at all, which is not the same as no abortions. No "better" direction is set.

Religious attendance

Share attending religious services frequently

World Values Survey Association and European Values Study · via Our World in Data · Free for non-commercial use with attribution · updated irregular (survey waves, roughly every 5 years)

The share who attend religious services at least once a month. This measures taking part, not belief or belonging to a religion. Those are three different things, and they can differ sharply. A country can be almost entirely religious by belonging and yet rarely attend anything. No "better" direction is set, and none could be defended. Attendance describes how people live. It does not show whether a country is doing well, and calling either end the good one would be a claim this site has no basis for. The survey runs in waves, not every year, so data for each country are sparse and uneven.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2024. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 3 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 14,952 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Abortion rate (legal, reported) and Religious attendance

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Abortion rate (legal, reported) changes Religious attendance, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.