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The determinants of religiosity among immigrants and the native born in Europe

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Abstract

This paper examines differences in religious behaviors of the native born and immigrants in European countries, measured by self-reported religiosity, frequency of praying, and frequency of church attendance. Using the European Social Survey, we first show that, on average, the religiosity of immigrants is greater than that of the native born and is greater than that of the stayers in the European origins, even among those who report they have no religious affiliation. Hypotheses are tested that can explain these observations. Differences in individual characteristics, such as age, education, income, marital status, and notably religious denominations, partly account for the overall differences. Religiosity of migrants declines with duration in the destination, approaching the levels of both the native born in destination countries and of the stayers in European origin countries. Both origin and destination country characteristics affect religiosity, such as economic development, religious pluralism, religious freedom, and societal attitudes towards religion, suggesting that both economic and culture persistence and adaptation take place.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, the term “church” is used to refer to any place of religious worship, regardless of the religion.

  2. The literature leaves open the question of overall potentially different assimilation patterns for Muslim immigrants. For the most recent studies, see Constant et al. (2006) and Manning and Roy (2010).

  3. In this paper the term “native born” refers to people living in the European country in which they were born, while immigrant refers to someone born outside the European country of residence at the time of the survey.

  4. There may also be selection in terms of religiosity: among those who migrate. Such selection, however, is not likely to take place in a systematic way. High religiosity may not be an easily transferable component of an individuals’ human capital as it may have a low value at a secularized destination and may penalize an immigrant. Thus, prospective immigrants, unless they are scholars or preachers of a religion, should be discouraged from significant investments valued only at the origin, such as higher religiosity. Therefore, while persecuted religious minorities in an origin may have an incentive to emigrate, active members of a dominant religious group in an origin would be less inclined to emigrate to an alien religious culture. Moreover, even if the immigrants are drawn from the less religious members of the origin population, they may still be more religious than the very low religiosity population in the destination. For an overview of the economics of immigrant religious adjustment, see Chiswick (2003).

  5. Even though education may have a differential impact on different measures of religiosity and also on affiliation with a religion (Mukhopadhyay 2011).

  6. To quote the British Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, 1966: “I do not regard [integration] as meaning the loss, by immigrants, of their own national characteristics and culture. I do not think that we need in this country a ‘melting pot’, which will turn everybody out in a common mould, as one of a series of carbon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of the stereotyped Englishman… I define integration, therefore, not a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance”. Quotation borrowed from Algan et al. (2010).

  7. Index of religious pluralism, or fractionalization (Iannaccone 1998; Alesina and La Ferrara 2000) is constructed according to the formula: \( {\text{RF}}_{i} = 1 - \sum\nolimits_{k} s_{ki}^{2} , \) where s is a share of k religion denominations in country i. This index is also known as one minus Herfindahl index of group shares. It measures the probability that two randomly drawn individuals in country i belong to different religions. Higher values of the index represent higher religious fragmentation, and hence, heterogeneity.

  8. The survey questionnaire notes that “Other Christians” category includes Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational or other denominations that can be categorized as Christian.

  9. Omitted are Italy, Bulgaria, Iceland, Cyprus and Turkey, for the lack of data on the foreign born, as well as Israel, for its specificity with regard to the question studied. For more details on this, and on the survey in general, see www.europeansocialsurvey.org. See also Jowell et al. (various issues).

  10. For destination countries, GDP per capita is measured at each year of the survey. For origin countries, we use the value for 2005, which corresponds to the mid-point of the data collection. Alternatively, we tried to include the GDP measure at time of migration, with similar results.

  11. From Table 2, col. 1, dREL/dAge = −0.025 + 0.041 × (Age/100) × 2, so that the partial effect is at its minimum at Age = 31 for self-reported religiosity. The partial effect is its minimum at Age = 23 for praying (Table 3, col. 1), and at Age = 27 for attendance (Table 4, col. 1).

  12. The gender effect is heterogeneous across denominations, however. In estimations done separately by denomination (below), we find that non-affiliated, and Christian women are more religious than men. In contrast, there is no statistically significant difference in self-reported religiosity and praying among Muslim men and women, while Muslim women have a statistically significant lower attendance rate. Jewish women and men do not have significantly different religious behavior along any of the three dimensions considered, but the Jewish sample is very small, only 68 observations, less than one percent of the native-born and the foreign-born.

  13. If we omit the square term from regressions, age has a statistically significant negative impact on praying for immigrants, and a positive impact on attendance, significant at the 7 % level.

  14. Native-born adult Muslims have a different distribution across countries than Muslim immigrants. In our sample, there are no Muslim natives in Switzerland, Estonia, Finland, Luxembourg, and Norway. The largest concentration of Muslim natives is in Russia (66 %), Greece (15 %), Great Britain (3 %), and Slovenia (3 %). The largest concentration of Muslim immigrants is in Germany (13 %), the Netherlands (10 %), Switzerland (10 %), and Great Britain (9 %); Muslim immigrants are more evenly distributed across the European countries than Muslim natives. There are no Muslims in our sample in the Czech Republic or Hungary, neither among immigrants nor among the native born.

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Correspondence to Mariya Aleksynska.

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We appreciate the comments received from the Editor and the two referees. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to their hosting organizations or to constituencies of these organizations. The first author expresses gratitude to the Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Informations Internationales (CEPII), where part of this research was carried out. The usual disclaimer applies.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Table 7 Sample description
Table 8 Definition of variables used in the regression analysis and data sources
Table 9 Descriptive statistics
Table 10 Religiosity outcomes of emigrants versus stayers

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Aleksynska, M., Chiswick, B.R. The determinants of religiosity among immigrants and the native born in Europe. Rev Econ Household 11, 563–598 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-013-9188-7

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