Analyzing Religiosity within an Economic Framework: The Case of Spanish Catholics

Brañas–Garza, Pablo; Neuman, Shoshana

doi:10.1023/b:reho.0000018020.84844.7c

“…religion transmission matters to economic phenomena such as educational attainments (Fan, 2008), marriage and inter-faith marriage (Bisin et al, 2004), fertility (Neuman, 2007;Brañas-Garza and Neuman, 2007); as well as attitudes which affect economic and social performance, such as attitudes in response to incentives (Brañas-Garza et al, 2010;García-Muñoz, 2010) This paper explores intergenerational transmission of 'religious capital' for a representative sample of spanish catholics. it extends a previous paper by the authors (Brañas-Garza and Neuman, 2004) that used the same sample to analyze religiosity patterns (expressed by church attendance and prayer) of Spaniards, within an economic framework 2 . The basic idea of this study is that the accumulation of an individual's 'religious capital' starts at childhood when he is watching his parents' religious activities and he is exposed to religious practice, such as mass attendance.…”

Section: Motivationsupporting

confidence: 52%

“…According to data from the Spanish Bureau of Statistics, close to 90% of the population are Catholic, about 1.5% has other religious affiliations and around 8.5% claim to have no religion. These figures have been fairly stable since 1990 (Brañas-Garza and Neuman, 2004). …”

Section: Motivationmentioning

confidence: 50%

Intergenerational transmission of ‘religious capital’. Evidence from Spain

Brañas–Garza¹,

García-Muñoz²,

Neuman³

2011

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This paper examines intergenerational transmission of 'religious capital' from parents to their offspring within an economic framework. The analytical tool is a 'production function of religiosity' where parental religious inputs serve as factors of production. The database used is based on a large-scale survey that was conducted in 1998 in Spain. In addition to information on the religious affiliation of the respondent and his parents, it has detailed data on two dimensions of the individual's religious performance: church attendance and prayer. it also includes information on the mother's and father's church attendance when the respondent was a child, as well as the respondent's participation in mass services at the age of 12. socio-economic background data are also available. The core findings are: (i) parental religious inputs significantly affect individuals' religiosity; (ii) interestingly, the route of intergenerational transmission is from mother to daughter and from father to son; and (iii) current mass participation of respondents is more affected by parental-than by own childhood mass attendance. KeywordsCatholic, Church Attendance, Intergenerational transmission, Prayer, Production.* During the time we were working on this paper we were unable to get the new dataset (ISSP-2008). We were aware of that the new wave was on the way but it was impossible to incorporate it on time. in fact the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) did not offered it until late 2010. We apologize for any inconvenience. As the Editor indicated is a basic and necessary empirical exercise to compare both waves (1998 y 2008) in order to improve our knowledge of this phenomena. Now, we have started to perform this analysis. revisTa inTernacional de socioloGía (ris) resuMenEn este estudio se examina la transmisión inter-generacional de capital religioso de padres a hijos, bajo un esquema de producción de 'religiosidad' donde los inputs parentales sirven como factores de producción. la base de datos utilizada está basada en una encuesta realizada en España en 1998. Se dispone de información sobre la afiliación religiosa del individuo y sus padres, la asistencia a misa y la oración del individuo (actualmente) y la asistencia a la iglesia de la madre y el padre y del propio individuo cuando este era niño (a los 12 años). Encontramos que los inputs religiosos parentales afectan de manera significativa a la religiosidad individual, pero la vía de transmisión inter-generacional es de madre a hija y de padre a hijo. Sorprendentemente, la participación actual en actividades religiosas está más afectada por las características religiosas parentales que por la propia actividad religiosa durante la infancia. Palabras claveAsistencia a la Iglesia, Católico, Oración, Producción, Transmisión Intergeneracional.

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“…Close to 50% of respondents were 'religious' at the age of 12. The lower percentage of women who are currently 'secular' and the larger share of 'religious' mothers (compared to men/fathers) is in line with theories and findings of other studies showing that women are generally more religious (Sandomirsky and Wilson, 1990;Sherkat, 1991;Beit-Hallahmi, 1997;Loveland, 2003;Brañas-Garza and Neuman, 2004).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 73%

“…It follows that more exposure to childhood religious socialization will decrease the likelihood of secularization later on in life. Gender differences in the religious transmission process have also been recognized (e.g., Beit-Hallahmi, 1997;Brañas-Garza and Neuman, 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Education was defined by dummy variables that relate to the last school attended by the respondent (academic; high school; with elementary school as the reference group) -Marital status variables: that included: marital status (=1 if married); number of people in household; and (married*spouse has 'no religion'). There is no consensus in the economics literature on the correlation between marital status and religious practice, or number of children and the intensity of religious practice (see Brañas-Garza and Neuman, 2004, for a more detailed discussion). Obviously, if the respondent is married to a spouse who identifies himself as having 'no religion', it increases his prospects to be secular.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The evolution of secularization: cultural transmission, religion and fertility—theory, simulations and evidence

Bar-El

¹

,

García-Muñoz

²

,

Neuman

³

et al. 2012

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu (2000, 2001a), it is assumed that cultural/social norms are transmitted from one generation to the next one via two venues: (i) direct socialization -across generations, by parents; and (ii) oblique socialization -within generations, by the community and cultural environment. This paper focuses on the transmission of religious norms and in particular on the 'religious taste for children'. The theoretical framework describes the setting and the process leading to secularization of the population; the simulations give more insight into the process; and 'secularization regressions' estimate the effects of the various explanatory variables on secularization (that is measured by rare mass-attendance and by rare-prayer), lending support to corollaries derived from the theory and simulations. The main conclusions/findings are that (i) direct religious socialization efforts of one generation have a negative effect on secularization within the next generation; (ii) oblique socialization by the community has a parabolic effect on secularization; and (iii) the two types of socialization are complements in 'producing' religiosity of the next generation. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SJEL Classification: C15, C25, D13, J11, J13, Z12

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The big carrot: High‐stakes incentives revisited

Brañas–Garza

¹

,

García-Muñoz

²

,

Neuman

³

2010

Behavioral Decision Making

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractUsing an international dataset of about 35,000 subjects, this paper provides an empirical example of high-stakes incentives in relation to religious practice. First, we show that incentives (based on absolute belief) play a salient role in religious performance. Second, we find that, when both positive (heaven) and negative (hell) incentives are available, the former are more effective than the latter. Specifically, it is shown that beliefs in heaven are much more relevant than beliefs in hell when estimating the production of religious commodities (church-attendance and praying equations).Keywords: carrot/stick, high-stakes incentives, rewards, punishment, Economics of Religion JEL Classification: C91, D64, Z13 1 Very helpful comments by the Editor and two anonymous referees are much appreciated. Pablo Brañas-Garza and Teresa García-Muñoz acknowledge financial support from MCI (SEJ2007-62081/ECON) and Junta de Andalucia Excelencia (P07.SEJ.02547). Part of this study was completed at the time Shoshana Neuman was staying at IZA (summer 2007 and 2008). She would like to thank IZA for their hospitality and excellent research facilities. In particular, thanks are due to Margard Ody, the IZA information manager, for providing the numerous publications read for the paper's literature review. Pascal's argument (extracted from "Pensées"). MotivationRecently, three salient topics have increased interest in the role of incentives in economic decisions: the loss aversion theory (e.g. Tversky & Kahneman, 1991); the effectiveness of punishment (vs. rewards) in experimental settings (Andreoni, Harbaugh & Vesterlund, 2003;Nikiforakis, 2008); and how results may vary when incentives are substantially larger -high-stakes incentives (Slonim & Roth, 1998).Following Azzi and Ehrenberg (1975) it is assumed that subjects invest in religious activities (church attendance and prayer) as necessary conditions for reaching heaven and avoiding hell. Heaven and hell therefore serve as incentives for religious behaviour. An interesting question that follows is whether religious activity of individuals is indeed affected by the degree of their belief in after-life. Moreover, is religious behaviour affected differently by belief in heaven (that relates to a gain/reward) and in hell (that expresses a loss/punishment)?This paper provides an empirical example of the effect of high-stakes incentives on religious practice, using about 35,00...

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Analyzing Religiosity within an Economic Framework: The Case of Spanish Catholics

Cited by 37 publications

References 23 publications

Intergenerational transmission of ‘religious capital’. Evidence from Spain

Intergenerational transmission of ‘religious capital’. Evidence from Spain

The evolution of secularization: cultural transmission, religion and fertility—theory, simulations and evidence

The big carrot: High‐stakes incentives revisited

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