Does education secularize the Islamic population? The effect of years of schooling on religiosity, voting, and pluralism in Indonesia

Kazuya Masuda and Muhammad Yudhistira

World Development, 2020, vol. 130, issue C

Abstract: The association between schooling and religious beliefs has been widely documented in the social science literature. Evidence of a causal relationship is, however, limited, particularly in developing countries where religion still plays a significant role in politics and legislation. To bridge this gap in the literature, the present study uses the across cohort variations in the exposure to 1978 education reform in Indonesia to examine the impact of completed years of education on individual religiosity in later life. The results suggest that attaining another year of schooling reduces self-reported religiousness by four percentage points. Consistent with this finding, it also changes solitary religious acts by reducing the number of times individuals pray and the likelihood that they eat only halal food. Educational attainment, however, has little effect on participation in social religious activities or attitude toward other faiths, although it does reduce the religious influence on voting behavior. These results suggest that a program promoting educational attainment in Islamic countries may have an important impact on individual’s religiosity and country’s political economy in the long run.

Keywords: Religion; Education; Indonesia; Voting behavior; Islam (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 I25 I26 J13 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X20300413
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Does education secularize the Islamic population? The effect of years of schooling on religiosity, voting, and pluralism in Indonesia (2020)
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:eee:wdevel:v:130:y:2020:i:c:s0305750x20300413

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104915

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().