Religion as a Determinant of Economic and Demographic Behavior in the United States

By E. Lehrer. Social Science Research Network, 2004

511 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper critically reviews and synthesizes research on the role of religion on various aspects of the economic and demographic behavior of individuals and families in the United States, including the choice of marital partner, union formation and dissolution, fertility, female time allocation, education, wages, and wealth. Using a theoretical framework based on Gary Becker’s contributions to the economics of the family, religious affiliation is seen to affect these outcomes because it has an impact on the costs and benefits of many interrelated decisions that people make over the life cycle. In addition, for behaviors that pertain to married couple households, affiliation matters because it is a complementary trait within the context of marriage. Religiosity, another dimension of religion, also affects economic and demographic outcomes, partly because it accentuates differences by religious affiliation, partly because of the generally beneficial effects that religious involvement has on health and well-being.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Health, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/183da7345104bdbc2da5b17ec8a60f41d349023d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Gender Studies

In Health

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Religious affiliation and hiring discrimination in New England: A field experiment (2013, background): “These mechanisms include educational aspirations (Stryker, 1981), social values (Lenski, 1961), sheltered enclaves (Sherkat & Ellison, 1999), internal locus of control (Muller & Ellison, 2001), family formation (Keister, 2008), gender roles (Sherkat, 2000), social capital (Muller & Ellison, 2001), a”
Deliver us from evil: religion as insurance (2007, background): “Lehrer and Chiswick (1993) use panel NSFH data to show that religion protects against marital break-up, especially when partners share the same denomination.”
Religious Social Norms and Corporate Financial Reporting (2012, unknown): “, 2003) to individual decision-making (e.g., Iannaccone, 1998; Lehrer, 2004).”
Earnings management behaviors under different monitoring mechanisms: The case of Islamic and conventional banks (2016, background): “A well-established branch of the literature indicates that religion has an important role in shaping the economic behavior of both individuals and organizations (Barro and McCleary, 2003; Stulz and Williamson, 2003; Lehrer, 2004; Vitell, 2009; Abdelsalam and El-Komi, 2014; Leventis et al., 2016).”
BEYOND BELIEF: ATHEISM, AGNOSTICISM, AND THEISTIC CERTAINTY IN THE UNITED STATES (2008, background): “…particularly since fundamentalist religious values are linked to lower levels of educational attainment and low rates of female labor force participation (Darnell and Sherkat 1997; Glass and Jacobs 2005; Keister 2003, 2008; Lehrer 1995, 1999, 2004; Sherkat 2000; Sherkat and Darnell 1999).”
Religion and Stock Price Crash Risk (2012, background): “…religiosity often has a positive and constructive impact on personality, cognition, attitude, and behavior in both nonbusiness and business contexts (see Miller and Hoffmann (1995), Khavari and Harmon (1982), Maltby (1999), Smith (2003), Waite and Lehrer (2003), and Lehrer (2004), among others).”
Religious affiliation religiosity and male and female fertility. (2008, background): “In general, a number of religious doctrines are linked to delayed sexual debut and entry into cohabitation, and more positive attitudes toward entering marital unions and having children (Bearman and Bruckner 2001; Lehrer 2004; Marchena and Waite 2001).”
Religious influences on the risk of marital dissolution (2009, background): “Because recent work in the social scientific study of religion has also linked religious affiliation, practice, or both with virtually all of these predictors (Lehrer, 2004; Mahoney et al., 2001; Sherkat & Ellison, 1999), it is important to include statistical adjustments for them in our models.”