Komt religiositeit met de jaren? De invloed van leeftijd, welvaart, sociale zekerheid en religieuze opvoeding op kerkbezoek en christelijk geloof in West-Europa

Samenvatting

'With age comes wisdom' so they say. Similarly, one could ask whether religiosity comes with age. Previous studies have shown that the relationship between religiosity and age is indeed positive. This, however, could also be a cohort effect, i.e. people born earlier are more religious. To test whether life cycle effects or cohort effects account for the relationship between religiosity and age we use the ISSP 1991 surveys from seven European countries. By taking gross national product (GNP) and social security rates as indicators for cohort effects we not only have more informative hypotheses, but we solve the identification problem as well. To test these hypotheses we apply a multi variate OLS-model. We find a substantial cohort effect: people from older cohorts experienced in their preadult years a lower GNP, a lower security rate, and went to church more often than those from more recent cohorts, and are therefore more religious. But there is also a striking life cycle effect: it is apostasy, and not religiosity, that comes with age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; Copyright of Mens en Maatschappij is the property of Amsterdam University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)