2024-03-28T09:17:16
119862
Thu Mar 28 09:17:18 EDT 2024
Data and Code for: Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-Century France
Mara P. Squicciarini
119862
https://doi.org/10.3886/E119862V1
This paper studies when religion can hamper diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I examine Catholicism in France during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914). In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. I find that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later, when schoolchildren entered the labor market.
Human capital
Religiosity
Industrialization
France
J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
N13 Economic History: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations: Europe: Pre-1913
Z12 Cultural Economics: Religion
France