Discussion paper

DP9299 Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties

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.

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Citation

Woessmann, L and S Becker (2013), ‘DP9299 Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 9299. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp9299