Employment, wages and religious revivals
in post-communist countries
Pavol Minárik
Turin / Prague
The problem
• After the collapse of Communist regimes in
Central Europe, religious participation (church
attendance) increased rapidly
• However, in most countries attendance rates
have declined subsequently
• How do we account for such development?
Prominent theories in SoR/EoR
• Secularization theory (demand-side)
– loss of faith/purpose due to modernization
– increase in existential security
… hardly applicable to post-communist countries
• Supply-side theory
– restricted competition at the religious market
lowers the quality of services, hence decline
– de-regulation in post-communist countries should
have enhanced competition (?)
The model
• Our model differs
– it focuses on the demand side and deals with
individual’s choice on religious participation
(Azzi & Ehrenberg JPE 1975, Sullivan 1985, etc.)
• Assumptions
– an individual maximizes utility from secular and
religious consumption
(both produced using time and money)
– an individual allocates her time to labor, leisure
and religious activities
The model
• Predictions (quite intuitive)
– the older one is, the higher the religious
participation (and consumption in general)
– the higher the wage rate, the lower the
religious participation
* actually, for the youngest cohorts, participation may be
slightly higher, as their wage rate is usually low
In the post-communist period
• Relevant factors in the post-communist period
– decrease in real wages
– decrease in employment rates
65
Czech Republic
Germany
Hungary
60
Poland
Slovakia
55
Slovenia
50
45
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
40
Age and participation (yearly)
Age and participation (weekly)
Employment and participation
Wages and participation
• It appears that participation is affected by
wages and employment more in Catholic
countries (Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia)
Logistic regression results (OR)
Wages have significant negative effect in Poland (OR=0.715; p=0.041) and
Slovakia (OR=0.704; p=0.052), but positive in Slovenia (OR=1.803; p=0.028).
Conclusions
• Regarding the model
– it does not explain the development completely;
although, it has some merits
• Regarding the model and alternative theories
– it appears that different theories might work better
as complements rather than substitutes
• Regarding religious participation
– economic factors do matter for religiosity
– secularization in post-communist countries may
follow Western models in future