Kiel Working Papers, Kiel Institute for World Economics
No 1576:
The Religious Transition. A Long-run Perspective
Martin Paldam and Erich Gundlach
Abstract: We use factor analysis to derive a robust measure of
religiosity from items reported in five waves of the World Value Survey.
Our measure of religiosity is negatively correlated with per capita income.
Development apparently causes religiosity to fall to about half its
pre-modern level. Most components of the demand for religion are reduced by
development. The supply of religion declines once churches lose control
over the institutions providing collective goods like education, health,
and social security. These goods used to be supplied by churches jointly
with religious services but tend to be supplied by the state with rising
levels of development. Aspects of supply and demand are integrated in a CES
production function framework that can explain the direction of causality
in the observed negative correlation between income and religiosity
Keywords: Levels of development, religiosity, biogeography; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: O11,; Z12; (follow links to similar papers)
35 pages, December 2009
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