When people go to school more, they go to church less - The Washington Post

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When people go to school more,

they go to church less
They're less likely to believe in lucky charms and rabbit's feet, too.

By Christopher Ingraham October 7 at 11:16 AM

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Photo by Flickr user Holly Hayes (CC)

Social science has traditionally considered education

and religion to be somewhat opposing forces. As
societies become more educated, the reasoning goes,
they will become less religious -- a phenomenon
known as the "secularization hypothesis."
Recent trends have complicated this understanding,
particularly in the United States. Educational
attainment has been on a steady rise for decades, but
Americans are, by and large, just as religious as ever -if not more so. A 2002 Harvard study of 59 countries
found that increased economic development led to

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When people go to school more, they go to church less - The Washington Post

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increases in some forms of religious behaviors, like

overall belief, but declines in things like church
attendance. Overall, the evidence on the secularization
hypothesis is, at best, mixed.
Now, new research out from economists at Louisiana
State University provides new evidence in support of
the secularization hypothesis, at least as it pertains to
some religious and superstitious behaviors. Not only
that, but it also uncovers evidence of a causal link
between increased schooling and decreased religiosity.
The study finds that more education, in the form of
more years of formal schooling, has "consistently large
negative effects" on an individual's likelihood of
attending religious services, as well as their likelihood
of praying frequently. More schooling also makes
people less likely to harbor superstitious beliefs, like
belief in the protective power of lucky charms (rabbit's
feet, four leaf clovers), or a tendency to take
horoscopes seriously.

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The researchers examined the effects of compulsory
schooling reforms undertaken in 11 European

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countries, primarily in the 1960s and 1970s. "While

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some cohorts of children were impacted by these law

changes, those who just missed the age cut-off of the
law were exempt from the mandate," the authors

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groups for a real-world experiment. The authors then

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looked at how the different cohorts answered survey

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questions about religiosity and superstition later in

life.

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When people go to school more, they go to church less - The Washington Post

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They found effects of education on religion and

superstition that were significant, and fairly large. One
additional year of schooling:
reduces the propensity to attend religious services
at least once a month by about 14 percentage
points;
decreases the propensity to attend religious
services at least weekly by about 10 percentage
points;
reduces the propensity to pray at least once a
week by about 15 percentage points;
reduces likelihood of belief in the protective
powers of a lucky charm by 11 or 12 percentage
points;
and decreases the propensity to consult
horoscopes frequently by 11 percentage points.
These results were robust to various demographic
controls, like employment and marital status.
How do we square these findings with what we see in
the U.S., where schooling has grown, but overall
religiosity has remained largely unchanged? The first
thing I'd note is that what holds true in Europe may
not similarly hold true in the U.S., particularly when it
comes to religion. Many European countries have
much cozier church-state relations than the U.S. -several of the ones included in this study, like Spain,
the U.K., and Ireland, have official state religions.
The U.S., by contrast, maintains fairly strict churchstate separation, which has led to a more dynamic and
competitive religious marketplace. While many
Americans express a desire for more religion in their

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/07/when-people-go-to-... 07/10/2014

When people go to school more, they go to church less - The Washington Post

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politics, paradoxically the separation of the two is what

makes religion such a powerful force in contemporary
American society.
This isn't to say that American religion isn't changing,
however. While belief in God has remained constant
over the decades, more and more people are deciding
they don't need a church to worship Him/Her as they
see fit. It is possible that as people become more
educated they become more skeptical of the external
trappings of religious belief - the churchgoing, the
rules, and the other features of organized
religion. Still, though, education may have less of an
impact on humans' core belief in a higher power.

Christopher Ingraham writes about politics, drug

policy and all things data. He previously worked
at the Brookings Institution and the Pew
Research Center.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/07/when-people-go-to-... 07/10/2014