Nber Working Paper Series the Effect of Education on Religion: Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws

For over a century, social scientists have debated how educational attainment impacts religious belief. In this paper, I use Canadian compulsory schooling laws to identify the relationship between completed schooling and later religiosity. I find that higher levels of education lead to lower levels of religious participation later in life. An additional year of education leads to a 4-percentage-point decline in the likelihood that an individual identifies with any religious tradition; the estimates suggest that increases in schooling can explain most of the large rise in non-affiliation in Canada in recent decades. Daniel M. Hungerman Department of Economics University of Notre Dame 439 Flanner Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556-5602 and NBER [email protected]