I'm going to guess that it does, at least in Russia. ~~Catholic~~ church has plenty of power there and they can pretty heavily push agenda for getting children as soon as you're married. And, I'd guess, at the same time government can pinky promise all kinds of support for young families (financial, daycare, healthcare...).

So, assuming they push this trough, it might have some kind of effect for the population decline. Obviously it'll take quite some time until effects are seen on workforce, but in statistics that can show up (at least in theory) pretty quickly.

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Catholic church has power in Russia? Whatever you're smoking, you need to lay off it.

[–] IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My bad, I meant whatever flavour of religion is popular over there has plenty of power (at least as long it aligns with Putin and friends).

[–] Damage@feddit.it 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The Orthodox church is still fairly weak after having been obliterated by the Soviets

[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Eh, the patriarch is buddy-buddy with Pu, plus there's yet another personal 'spiritual advisor'. The church isn't shy about advocating for whatever the government's course is, including the war. Land and large sums of money are given to the church to build church buildings every few blocks and on parklands. The Ministry of Defence had a humongous cathedral built on the outskirts of Moscow. Pu and the clique stop just short of pronouncing Russia an Orthodox country, probably only because Muslims constitute a large portion of the populace.

Note also that Christianity was never really 'obliterated' in the USSR. Firstly, Stalin himself did a 180 during WW2 when he needed to unite the people against Germany, and the religion was used in propaganda as one such unifying sentiment among others. Then, people migrating in large masses from the rural areas never stopped worshipping: I've known some folks born before the WW2, who living in the city kept a whole array of icons and spent time praying each morning. Basically, the church bounced back pretty well.