Employment, Wages, and Religious Revivals in Postcommunist Countries

Abstract

The fall of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe has profoundly changed the religious landscape in many countries. Sociologists have studied the rise and decline of religious beliefs and participation in the post-communist region, but economic approaches have been rare. This article suggests supplementing the dominant theories—the demand-side explanation of secularization and the supply-side explanation of religious revivals—with a model of individual time allocation. The model presented in the article predicts both the initial growth and the subsequent decline of religious participation in postcommunist countries. The empirical portion of the article focuses on six central European countries with different levels of religiosity. Data from the three waves of the ISSP survey support the model.