Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/79223 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
cege Discussion Papers No. 168
Publisher: 
University of Göttingen, Center for European, Governance and Economic Development Research (cege), Göttingen
Abstract: 
In this paper we examine the long-run relationship between religiosity and income using retrospective data on church attendance rates for a panel of countries from 1925 to 1990. We employ panel cointegration and causality techniques to control for omitted variable and endogeneity bias and test for the direction of causality. We show that there exists a negative long-run relationship between the level of religiosity, measured by church attendance, and the level of income, measured by the log of GDP per capita. The result is robust to alternative estimation methods, potential outliers, sample selection, different measures of church attendance, and alternative specifications of the income variable. Long-run causality runs in both directions, higher income leads to declining religiosity and declining religiosity leads to higher income.
Subjects: 
religiosity
church attendance
income
panel cointegration
causality
JEL: 
N30
O11
C23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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