Measuring Religion from Behavior: Climate Shocks and Religious Adherence in Afghanistan

Oeindrila Dube, Joshua Blumenstock and Michael Callen

No 30694, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Religious adherence has been hard to study in part because it is hard to measure. We develop a new measure of religious adherence, which is granular in both time and space, using anonymized mobile phone transaction records. After validating the measure with traditional data, we show how it can shed light on the nature of religious adherence in Islamic societies. Exploiting random variation in climate, we find that as economic conditions in Afghanistan worsen, people become more religiously observant. The effects are most pronounced in areas where droughts have the biggest economic consequences, such as croplands without access to irrigation.

JEL-codes: O13 Q1 Q15 Q54 Z10 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11
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Related works:
Working Paper: Measuring Religion from Behavior: Climate Shocks and Religious Adherence in Afghanistan (2023)
Working Paper: Measuring Religion from Behavior: Climate Shocks and Religious Adherence in Afghanistan (2022)
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