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

Pablo Brañas-Garza () and Shoshana Neuman ()

No 868, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: Using a sample of Spanish Catholics, we examined the level of religiosity (measured by beliefs, prayer and church attendance) and the relationship between religiosity and various socio-economic variables. An Ordered Logit estimation of religiosity equations showed that: women are more religious than men; religious activity increases with age; there is a (marginally) significant positive relationship between schooling and religiosity; religiosity is positively related to exposure to religious activity during childhood; and male religious activity is positively affected by marital status (being married to a catholic wife) and by the number of children at home. The results also demonstrate the importance of the “salvation motive” for the two genders and the presence of the “professional utilitarian motive” in male religious behaviour.

Keywords: religiosity; prayer; church attendance; education; Spain; Ordered Logit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z12 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-edu, nep-eec and nep-ltv
Date: 2003-08
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp868.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Analyzing Religiosity within an Economic Framework: The Case of Spanish Catholics (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp868

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().