EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties

Sascha Becker, Ludger Woessmann and Sascha O. Becker
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Sascha O. Becker

No 4115, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: The interplay between religion and the economy has occupied social scientists for long. We construct a unique panel of income and Protestant church attendance for six waves of up to 175 Prussian counties spanning 1886-1911. The data reveal a marked decline in church attendance coinciding with increasing income. The cross-section also shows a negative association between income and church attendance. But the association disappears in panel analyses, including first-differenced models of the 1886-1911 change, panel models with county and time fixed effects, and panel Granger-causality tests. The results cast doubt on causal interpretations of the religion-economy nexus in Prussian secularization.

Keywords: religion; secularization; Prussian economic history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N33 Z12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4115.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties (2013) Downloads
Working Paper: Not the opium of the people: Income and secularization in a panel of prussian counties (2013)
Working Paper: Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties (2013) Downloads
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:ces:ceswps:_4115

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-30
Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4115