American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties
American Economic Review
vol. 103,
no. 3, May 2013
(pp. 539–44)
Abstract
The interplay between religion and the economy has long occupied social scientists. We construct a unique panel of income and Protestant church attendance using 175 Prussian counties, presented in six waves from 1886 to 1911. The data reveal a marked decline in church attendance coinciding with increasing income. The cross-section also shows a negative association between income and church attendance. The associations disappear in panel analyses, including first-differenced models of the 1886 to 1911 change, panel models with county and time fixed effects, and panel Granger-causality tests. The results cast doubt on causal interpretations of the religion-economy nexus in Prussian secularization.Citation
Becker, Sascha O., and Ludger Woessmann. 2013. "Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties." American Economic Review, 103 (3): 539–44. DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.3.539Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- E23 Macroeconomics: Production
- N13 Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: Europe: Pre-1913
- N33 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
- N93 Regional and Urban History: Europe: Pre-1913
- Z12 Cultural Economics: Religion