The Long-Term Impact of Church Activity on Social Capital: Lessons from Post-War Czechoslovakia

Stepan Mikula (), Tommaso G. Reggiani () and Fabio Sabatini ()
Additional contact information
Stepan Mikula: Masaryk University
Tommaso G. Reggiani: Cardiff University
Fabio Sabatini: Sapienza University of Rome

No 17981, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We exploit a historical experiment that occurred in Czechoslovakia after World War Two to study the drivers of social capital accumulation in an extremely unfavorable environment. Between 1945 and 1948, the Sudetenland became the scene of ethnic cleansing, with the expulsion of nearly three million German speakers and the simultaneous influx of nearly two million resettlers. Focusing on the areas where at least 90% of the population was forced to leave, we show that the municipalities hosting a church built before 1945 developed significantly higher social capital under the communist rule, which persisted after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. The heterogeneity of effects reveals that the longer a resident pastor served in a parish, the more civic capital emerged in the municipality after the Velvet Revolution, suggesting that the social interactions facilitated by pastors were crucial in establishing the foundational layer for social capital in church-hosting communities.

Keywords: social capital; forced migration; conflict; institutions; religion; transition countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 L31 N24 N44 N94 O15 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-soc
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17981.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:iza:izadps:dp17981

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 of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().