Occupation and Gender: American Jews at the Millennium [Chiswick,_C]
Chiswick, Carmel U.
University of Illinois at Chicago
American Jewish women are active labor force participants. The implications of this for Jewish family life is the subject of much discussion, but the implications for Jewish communal life are also substantial. This paper uses data from NJPS 2000/2001 to provide an empirical underpinning for a discussion of the many consequences of women’s work for the American Jewish community. Part II presents the basic data on the labor force experience of Jewish women and two-career families. Part III looks at the occupations of married Jewish men and women, and Part IV looks at the educational attainments that underlie these patterns. Part V discusses some associated demographic behaviors, and Part VI concludes with a summary and a brief discussion of consequences.
File: Chiswick OccGen Brandeis.doc [276.50KB]
Published 11/02/2007
Filed under: *chiswick_c, @asrec'07, economics of religion, judaism, njps, women
Introduction to the Economics of Religion [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Journal of Economic Literature, 1998
Abstract: With two centuries separating its first and second publications, there is no denying that the economics of religion got off to a slow start. Yet despite this leisurely launch, dozens of economists (and several sociologists) have now picked up where Adam Smith ((1776) 1965) and Corry Azzi and Ronald Ehrenberg (1975) left off. Armed with the tools of economic theory and a large body of data, they have written nearly 200 papers concerning issues that were previously confined to other social sciences—the determinants of religious belief and behavior, the nature of religious institutions, and the social and economic impact of religion. If the study of religion does not yet warrant a classification number, let alone the subfield status that it enjoys within every other social science, it nevertheless qualifies as new territory within the expanding domain of economics.
File:
Iannaccone - Introduction to the Economics of Religion.pdf [199.80KB]
File:
Iannaccone - Introduction Extra Refs.pdf [23.21KB]
Published 09/01/1998
Filed under: (1998), *iannaccone, bibliography, economics of religion, introduction
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
Toward a Theory of Religious "Fundamentalism" [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Santa Clara University
Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics
This essay outlines an economic approach to the study of sectarian religion, an approach that explains and integrates many of the empirical findings concerning contemporary “fundamentalism”. It also seeks to identify assumptions that have biased previous studies, causing them to overstate fundamentalism’s threat and misinterpret the causes of fundamentalist militancy (JEL: Z1).
File: Iannaccone - FTheory.pdf [1.75MB]
Published 03/01/1997
Filed under: (1997), *iannaccone, economics of religion, fundamentalism, sect
Religion, Values, and Behavioral Constraint [Iannaccone]
Laurence R. Iannaccone
Working Paper
George Mason University
Political and journalistic discourse these days is filled with talk about values, though most of it amounts to little more than hand-wringing and finger-pointing. Our nation is said to face a crisis of values. Increased rates of divorce, juvenile crime, and teen pregnancy are blamed on the deterioration in family values. Major social institutions – schools, churches, families, the entertainment industry, and government at all levels – find themselves under increasing pressure to do something about values. In such a climate, both rhetoric and reality impel social scientists to enter the fray.
Economists, however, find it difficult to talk about values. Part of this difficulty lies in their relatively precise approach to the study of human behavior; by economic standards, most values talk is hopelessly vague and politicized. But a deeper difficulty concerns the very foundations of economics, specifically the assumption of stable preferences. As Gary Becker (1976:5) observed some twenty years ago, it is the relentless and unflinching use of this assumption, together with the assumptions of maximizing behavior and market equilibrium, that “form[s] the heart of the economic approach” to human behavior.
File: Iannaccone - Values.pdf [66.40KB]
Published 01/01/1980
Filed under: *iannaccone, economics of religion, habits, religiosity, values