Sunday, October 18, 2015

Impact of education on individual beliefs

The Economist put me onto "Compulsory schooling laws and formation of beliefs: education, religion and superstition", by Nanci Mocan and Luiza Pogorelova, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2014.  The magazine's article "Falling away" states:

"Just one extra year of schooling makes someone 10% less likely to attend a church, mosque or temple, pray alone or describe himself as religious, concludes a paper* published on October 6th that looks at the relationship between religiosity and the length of time spent in school. It uses changes in the compulsory school-leaving age in 11 European countries between 1960 and 1985 to tease out the impact of time spent in school on belief and practice among respondents to the European Social Survey, a long-running research project."

The paper is an interesting read from the perspective of the impacts of education on the transformation of societies for the future, how they behalf and how they will evolve culturally.  This is of value to consumer driven organizations.

You can download the copy of the above mentioned paper here.

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