Intergenerational Transmission of 'Religious Capital': Evidence from Spain (original) (raw)
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Sociological Forum, 2023
Although there is a rich body of research on religious transmission, relatively little attention has been given to studying this within specific religious traditions such as Catholicism, especially in Europe. Using data from the 2018 round of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), this study uses regression analysis to investigate individual-level determinants of religious transmission in 12 European countries with a Catholic tradition. We find support for the idea that parental religious socialization impacts adults' religiosity. More specifically, we find that childhood religiosity has explanatory effects separate from the impact of parental religiosity and that the religiosity of the father has a greater impact on offspring religiosity than the religiosity of the mother. We also find that childhood church attendance has a stronger effect in former communist countries than in western European countries. Overall, this study suggests the religious socialization perspective should be considered more in religious group-specific terms.
The Intergenerational Transmission of Religious Service Attendance
Nordic Journal of Religion and Society, 2012
Religious change is often described with aggregate figures on affiliation, practice and belief. Such studies tell us that secularisation happens because each cohort is less religious than the one before, and that socialisation in childhood and habits formed in young adulthood are overwhelmingly responsible for religious decline. In this article we use data from the International Social Survey Programme to consider the extent and magnitude of religious decline at the level of families, whether parental influence is greater in more religious countries, and which individual variables influence the intergenerational transmission of religious practice and whether these vary between different countries. We find that secularisation happens largely because many people are a little less religious than their parents, and relatively few are more religious. We also find that the patterns of transmission are remarkably stable: parents are no more influential in religious countries than in nonreligious countries, and there is no indication that they have lost influence over time.
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
Se presenta una breve discusión sobre el comportamiento religioso desde una perspectiva microeconómica, teniendo en cuenta las decisiones individuales sobre asistencia al templo religioso y su frecuencia, en algunos países americanos y europeos de origen latino. Con este objetivo, se analizan los vínculos entre el grado de religiosidad de los individuos y varias variables socioeconómicas. Se confirmó que los uruguayos son los menos religiosos. Adicionalmente, se encontró que la actividad religiosa es más intensa para las mujeres y las personas de edad avanzada, y el efecto del nivel educativo es ambiguo. Por último, se encontró que las personas más ricas son más religiosas, pero los países con mayor ingreso per cápita son menos religiosos.
Religions, 2024
This empirical study investigates the transformation of religiosity in Spain over the two decades from 1998 to 2018, with a focus on social changes in belief, religiosity, and religious controversies, as well as the evolution of religious socialization. By incorporating the concepts of religious socialization and religious controversy into the theoretical framework, the study analyzes data from three waves of surveys on religious topics conducted in Spain during this period. The descriptive findings reveal a clear trend towards a decline in religious belief, religiosity, and practice, coupled with a significant rise in atheistic and non-religious attitudes. Moreover, the explanatory analysis indicates a reduction in the impact of primary religious socialization during childhood, while sociodemographic variables such as age and ideology have either maintained or increased their influence in shaping religious or non-religious positions. The study identifies religious polarization, driven by a marked increase in atheism and non-religion, and suggests that intergenerational and ideological shifts are more critical in explaining changes in religious beliefs than traditional religious socialization processes.
Less gives less, more gives more: Socialisation and religiosity in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area
Social Compass, 2024
This article explores the theme of religious socialisation in an environment marked by modernity. It has three goals: first, to analyse the changes in religious socialisation across age groups; second, to analyse the impact of religious socialisation on religiosity; and third, to analyse the impact of religiosity on religious socialisation. Based on quantitative data about the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, results show the following: The level of religious socialisation increases with age, but young respondents have been significantly less socialised than older age groups; the level of religious education provided by respondents to their children increases with age; socialisation and religiosity are biunivocal, mutually reinforcing. In short, this article reinforces the theory of cohort replacement, which states that religiosity decreases in younger groups due to the decrease in religious socialisation over time.
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2006
The paper explores the relationship between religiosity and fertility among Catholics in Spain, thereby answering the question whether the two parallel trends of dramatic drops in fertility and in religiosity are inter-related. It looks at current religiosity as well as exposure to religiosity during childhood. A unique, rich, data set is employed. It includes various dimensions of religiosity: respondent's religious affiliation; if he is Catholic-his current mass attendance (six levels) and his current prayer habits (eleven levels); spouse's religious affiliation; parental (maternal and paternal) and respondent's mass attendance when the respondent was a child (nine levels); Catholic education during childhood (yes/no). The multifacet data on religiosity (rather than a single dichotomous variable) facilitates a sophisticated analysis with rigorous conclusions. The sample is restricted to married Catholic (female and male) respondents who were raised by Catholic parents, and are married to a Catholic spouse, in order to have a homogenous sample and to focus on the effect of the level (intensity) of religiosity (rather than religious affiliation) on fertility. Fertility is related to the various dimensions of religiosity-first using cross-tabulation and then using OLS regression. We find that fertility is not related to current intensity of religiosity. Exposure to religious activities during childhood has a significant effect on fertility of women (but not men): interestingly a father who was actively attending mass services has a positive effect on his daughter's future fertility (increasing the number of kids by about 0.8) while the mother's active mass participation has a reverse negative effect (leading to a decrease of one kid). Own participation in mass services during childhood has a positive effect on fertility-leading to an increase of 0.6 kids if the girl attended mass services intensively This study indicates the significance of childhood experience in shaping the 'taste for children'. It also suggests that there is no direct link between the fast secularization in Spain and the decline in birth rates.
Intergenerational Transmission of Religiosity Among Hungarian Large Families
2016
In our study we examine large families as a special layer of the Hungarian society, in terms of intergenerational transmission of religious self-identification. In the research we applied dyadic data analysis. Our data revealed that family is the prime field of religious socialization and detected a significant correlation in the religiosity of fathers, mothers and their offspring. While examining the religiosity of parents and their children, we could not find any data which would justify the assumption that this significant correlation could be partially explained by the cultural stereotypes, or by the shared values of society. Furthermore we found that birth order has an effect on the success of transmitting different types of religiosity intergenerationally and is inherited with various efficiencies.
Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems : INDECS, 2021
This article is based on the "Religion and Human Rights 2,0" research, a survey carried out in Croatia (N = 1286) conducted on high school, Gymnasium, students 17-19 years old. It examines the influence of parents' religiosity on the religious practice of adolescents among Catholics (N = 1097). There are three dominant questions to be addressed in the article: a) how much and how does the religiosity of their parents influence the religious practice of young people? b) how much does the religiosity of parents affect the specific dimensions of religious practice (the frequency of prayer, the frequency of going to church) of young people? c) does the impact of the parent's religiosity on the child differ in cases where they are both the same sex and in cases in which they are not? The results, obtained by a series of linear regression analyses show that in a) and b) there is some influence of the religiosity of parents on young people. It is also shown that c) there is a dominant influence of the same-sex parent on the child in this respect (mother-daughter, father-son), while the incentive or compulsion to go to mass shows the effect only in the father-daughter dyad. The findings confirm the importance of parental religiosity for youth religiosity a little bit more for church attendance than for the frequency of prayer. They call for the use of elements of parental religiosity in the research of youth religiosity. They also point to the greater effect of parents' religious beliefs and the importance they attach to their child's religiosity than the coercion/incentive to religious practices. KEY WORDS youth religiosity, adolescent Catholics, parental religiosity, religiosity of parents CLASSIFICATION JEL: Z12