Believing and Practicing: How Religion Shapes Human Capital and Growth

Sebastiano Lena, Yasuhiro Sato and Yves Zenou

No 26148, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin)

Abstract: We develop a dynamic model in which individuals allocate time between work and religious activities, and parents invest in their children's human capital and religious belief. The model delivers, in a unified framework, the two empirical regularities documented by Barro and McCleary (2003) and McCleary and Barro (2019): controlling for religious activities, stronger belief raises economic growth because it raises human capital investment; controlling for belief, more time spent on religious activities lowers growth by crowding out labor supply. While the labor-supply margin is individually optimal, the human-capital margin is not: parents do not internalize that greater human-capital investment crowds out future religious transmission through the socialization channel, leading to inefficiently high human capital in equilibrium under strong socialization externality.

Keywords: religion; human capital; cultural transmission; economic growth; cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 O40 R11 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/26148.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crm:wpaper:26148

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Moritz Lubczyk () and Matthew Nibloe ().