Religion Reloaded: Scenarios for Spirituality in the 21st Century [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Abstract: Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, the past thirty to forty years have been a period of surprisingly slow change throughout America – slow relative to the century that came before, slow relative to changes in the less developed or formerly communist countries, and slow, I suspect, relative to the decades to come.
Religious change has been especially slow. Christianity remains the dominant American faith, Catholics remain the largest denomination, and surveyed rates of church attendance, church membership, belief in God, and self-reported religiosity remain largely unchanged since the 1960s. Established trends have continued – including growth in the share of people identifying with new religions, non-Christian religions, and no religion – but the magnitude of change has been less than expected in the 1960s and far less than predicted by proponents of “secularization” theory or “Dead of God” theology…
File: Iannaccone - Religion Reloaded.pdf [25.18KB]
Published 09/01/2003
Filed under: *iannaccone, attendance, future of religion, religiosity, secularization, spirituality
Looking Backward: A Cross-National Study of Religious Trends [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Abstract: Retrospective questions in the 1991 and 1998 ISSP surveys yield detailed estimates of religious trends across dozens of countries. The estimates span most of the 20th century and appear to be remarkably consistent, reliable, and unbiased. Retrospective data thus greatly increase our knowledge of recent religious history, and retrospective methods provide inexpensive means to expand it further still. Even a cursory analysis of the ISSP data offer numerous new insights regarding secularization, the impact of Vatican II, religion and gender, religious repression, and the religious socialization of youth. The potential for further insights is immense.
File:
Iannaccone - Looking Backward.pdf [155.69KB]
File:
Iannaccone - Looking Backward - Supplement A.pdf [83.04KB]
Published 07/29/2003
Filed under: (2003), *iannaccone, attendance, issp, religion, retrospective, trends
Skewness Explained: A Rational Choice Model of Religious Giving [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1997
Abstract: This paper explores the determinants of religious giving through simulations, economic theory, and survey data. Skewness, a distinctive yet poorly understood feature of religious giving, proves to be an inevitable consequence of the weak correlation between absolute levels of income and percentage rates of giving. The weak correlation can be derived, in turn, from a formal, rational choice model of religious participation. Data from the General Social Surveys show that this model also accounts for many other observed patterns in giving and church attendance.
File:
Iannaccone - Skewness Explained.pdf [1.55MB]
File:
Iannaccone - Skewness Explained -D.pdf [77.34KB]
Published 06/01/1997
Filed under: (1997), *iannaccone, attendance, contributions, economics of religion, giving, gss, philanthropy, rational choice, rationality, religion, skewness