Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-Century France
103 Pages Posted: 2 Aug 2019
There are 2 versions of this paper
Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-Century France
Date Written: July 2019
Abstract
This paper uses a historical setting to study when religion can be a barrier to the diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I focus on 19th-century Catholicism and analyze a crucial phase of modern economic growth, the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914) in France. In this period, technology became skill-intensive, leading to the introduction of technical education in primary schools. At the same time, the Catholic Church was promoting a particularly antiscientific program and opposed the adoption of a technical curriculum. Using data collected from primary and secondary sources, I exploit preexisting variation in the intensity of Catholicism (i.e., religiosity) among French districts and cantons. I show that, despite a stable spatial distribution of religiosity over time, more religious locations had lower economic development only during the Second Industrial Revolution, but not before. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower introduction of the technical curriculum and instead a push for religious education. Religious education, in turn, was negatively associated with industrial development about 10 to15 years later, when school-aged children entered the labor market, and this negative relationship was more pronounced in skill-intensive industrial sectors.
Keywords: Human Capital, Industrialization, Religiosity
JEL Classification: J24, N13, Z12
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Register to save articles to
your library
Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-Century France
This is a CEPR Discussion Paper. CEPR charges a fee of $8.00 for this paper.
If you wish to purchase the right to make copies of this paper for distribution to others, please select the quantity.
