The demography of intolerance: communist legacy, demographic threat, and attitudes toward homosexuality

Abstract

ABSTRACT We analyse attitudes toward homosexuality in postcommunist- and Western Europe, focusing on two distinctive postcommunist demographic trends: dramatic and rapid declines in fertility, which may spark fears about the “future of the nation” (fertility threat) and persistently elevated mortality rates, which evoke feelings of insecurity and sustain “survival values” that are less tolerant of homosexuality (mortality threat). We probe this theorisation's plausibility using attitudinal data from 1989 through 2022, finding that mortality threat contributes to regional differences in tolerance but little evidence that fertility threat does. Our analysis refines theorising about communist legacies and demographic alarmism in populist rhetoric.