Rainfall Risk and Religious Membership in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States

Philipp Ager and Antonio Ciccone

No 14-20, Working Papers from University of Mannheim, Department of Economics

Abstract: Building on the idea that religious communities provide mutual insurance against some idiosyncratic risks, we argue that religious membership is more valuable in societies exposed to greater common risk. In our empirical analysis we exploit rainfall risk as a source of common economic risk in the nineteenth-century United States and show that religious communities were larger in counties where they faced greater rainfall risk. The link between rainfall risk and the size of religious communities is stronger in counties that were more agricultural, that had lower population densities, or that were exposed to greater rainfall risk during the growing season.

Keywords: Religious community size; agricultural risk; informal insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/36848/1/Ager_und_Ciccone_14-20.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Rainfall Risk and Religious Membership in the Late Nineteenth-Century United States (2014)
Working Paper: Rainfall Risk and Religious Membership in the Late Nineteenth-Century US (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mnh:wpaper:36848

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