**1. Introduction**

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Religion plays a very important role in the lives of many Americans. Over two-thirds of Americans belong to a church or other religious organization, and this trend has risen substantially over time. Two-fifths of Americans attend church in a typical week, and 95% profess belief in "the existence of God or a universal spirit" (Iannaccone, 1998). In addition, charity giving to religious causes accounts for more than two-thirds of all reported individual charitable contributions. Religiosity is not confined to particular income groups, racial groups, or locations in the U.S.: religious adherence and participation is widespread among all demographic groups. Religion plays an especially important role in education. Wilson (1978, pp. 262–263) notes that

"…Religious training is something that all but two percent of American parents feel they should give their children

…Parents see the church as a place of character building for their children . . . Children are frequently the most important consideration in choosing a particular church ... Couples with growing children have the highest rate of church attendance."

In addition, sociologists and psychologists' research also shows that parents' religious participation has a profound impact on their children's moral behaviors. For example, Nock (1992, p. 333) summarizes:

"... American parents believe it important that their children receive moral and ethical guidelines from their church. This is why church attendance is highest among parents with young children . . . children are much more responsive to the behavioral models than to instruction. They are much more likely to imitate what they see parents and others do than what they hear parents and others say . . ."

Given this important role of religion, few economists have studied the relationship between religious participation and education attainment. This is certainly not the case in other disciplines. Hundreds of articles in sociology, psychology, and medicine overwhelmingly document the positive impacts of religiosity on a wide variety of educational outcomes. Those few studies by economists have also found that religiosity, and in particular religious participation, is strongly associated with positive educational outcomes.

Religious Participation and Educational Attainment: An Empirical Investigation 319

religious attendance will increase; if a person is married, his or her church attendance will decrease. In addition, I find that more prestigious occupation has a negative effect on one's

The chapter proceeds as follows. In section two, I review the literature on religiosity and outcomes, and on religious activities and education motivation and achievements. In section three, I briefly state the theoretical model according to Simon Fan's paper "Religious Participation and Children's Education: A Social Capital Approach". In section four, I describe the data sources and empirical strategy for the analysis. Section five presents the main results,

Religion is directly or indirectly related to academic success or failure. A look at the religious history of Catholics and Protestants in the American society shows that the religious background of those two groups is actually influenced by their religious and social upbringing (Veroff, Feld, & Gurin, 1962; Guiso, Sapienza, & Zingale, 2003). This stems from the parents' demands placed on children from an early age onwards to achieve academically and reach upward social mobility. For example, Protestants perform better academically than the Catholics (Veroff et al., 1962; Hanushek, 1996)). This is mainly attributed to the way mothers deal with their children's academic performance. In Protestant homes, mothers are inclined to use symbolic punishment as disciplinary action such as restricting privileges or reprimanding; whereas in Catholic home, the mothers use physical punishment such as spanking and reward also materialistically reward for good academic standing. This kind of physical reward and punishment is not conducive to academic motivation and strive in the long run, but is only a quick fix (Veroff et al., 1962). However, it also should be noted that academic performance varies in meaning from one religious group to another. Catholics, for example may have more internalized standards for academic performances than the Protestants, but this hypothesis needs more research to stand on more solid ground (Veroff

More recent studies also look at the relationship between religion and education for immigrants and non-immigrants, Hispanics versus African Americans, and Asian versus white Americans rather than Catholics versus Protestants. Studies try to analyze whether those immigrants' succeed or fail in the rooted environment of religion, or in a certain social structure. The researches show that Asians, specifically Chinese and Korean, have higher academic achievement rates than white Americans. Whether those Asians come from a prestigious background (daughters and sons of engineers, physicians, or scientists) or nonprestigious background (daughters and sons of low-skilled laborers, uneducated or poor), they are repeatedly the valedictorians of their high schools or the winners of decathlons, etc. (Zhou & Kim, 2006). They also enroll in the most prestigious universities in the United States of America such as University of California-Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Irvine (Zhou

Some research may attribute this high academic achievement to the fact that these immigrant groups are deeply rooted in their religious Confucian background. However,

religious attendance. These results are robust to a variety of specification checks.

and assesses their robustness to alternative interpretations. Section six concludes.

**2. Literature review** 

et al., 1962).

& Kim, 2006, Evan & Schwab, 1995).

**2.1 Religion and motivation** 

As pointed out by Glaeser (2002) in the context of religion and education, the most natural omitted factor is the degree of religious belief, i.e. the extent to which individuals believe that there are returns to religious activity. Measures of religious belief are strongly correlated with religious attendance and negatively associated with education. Less educated people are more likely to believe in miracles, heaven, devils, and the literal truth of the Bible. Furthermore, denominations are, to a significant extent, defined by their beliefs, and unsurprisingly sorting across denominations on the basis of religious beliefs is stronger than sorting across denominations on the basis of education. As such, religious belief is a natural omitted factor that is negatively correlated with education, positively correlated with attendance and very important for sorting across denominations. For the analysis of this study, I try to separate the measure of religious facts and religious belief.

In this paper, first I apply the cross-tab method to investigate the relationship between one's highest education attained and other various religious variables: whether a person's education level will affect his or her religious activities. Second, I use the regression model to test whether education, occupation, and other variables are associated with his or her church attendance. I rely on the General Social Survey1 (GSS), a nationally representative survey that collects data on religious preference and religious participation. In this paper, I craft a simple statistical model of religious attendance, education and belief and then I estimate that model. I try to explore whether other factors also affect church attendance. In the literature, there is a negative relationship between education and church attendance; however, this relationship is proved to be statistically insignificant. This negative relationship may be the result of omitted factors (such as interests and social skills), which relate both to church going and school attendance. Both activities require sitting still, listening, being interested in abstract ideas and putting future gains ahead of current gratification. There is the connection between church attendances and a wide range of formal social activities that require similar skills and interests as church going.

My results are striking. I find that there is significant association between "one's highest degree" and "their feelings about the bible", "agree to allow anti-religionist to teach", and "how fundamentalist was one at age 16. Similarly, a significant relationship exists between "one's highest degree earned" and "how fundamentalist was one currently". Other variables that are significantly associated with "a person's highest degree earned" include the following variables: "feelings about the bible", "confidence in the existence of God", "The Pope is infallible on matters of faith or morals", "how often does one pray", "whether one should agree that there can by Bible prayer in public schools or not", "whether one agrees that sinners must be punished or not", "whether one has ever had a 'born again' experience", "how often does one take part in religious activities", etc2. Besides, I find that there is a significant effect between one's religion attendance and other control variables. Education has a significant negative effect on the religious attendance; however, the effect is insignificant. Other variables that have significant effects on a person's religious attendances are the following: the number of children a person have, whether the person is married or not, and the marital status of the person. As the number of children increases, the days of church attendance will increase; if a person is from the Catholic denomination, his or her

<sup>1</sup> I use the most recent data available from GSS, which is from the year 2010.

<sup>2</sup> In the result part, I do not report all the significant associations; I only report those ones I considered important according to the literature.

religious attendance will increase; if a person is married, his or her church attendance will decrease. In addition, I find that more prestigious occupation has a negative effect on one's religious attendance. These results are robust to a variety of specification checks.

The chapter proceeds as follows. In section two, I review the literature on religiosity and outcomes, and on religious activities and education motivation and achievements. In section three, I briefly state the theoretical model according to Simon Fan's paper "Religious Participation and Children's Education: A Social Capital Approach". In section four, I describe the data sources and empirical strategy for the analysis. Section five presents the main results, and assesses their robustness to alternative interpretations. Section six concludes.
