Catholic Share Research Articles

Voting Behaviour in the 19th German Bundestag and Beyond: Between the Daily Business of Unity and a Special Vote of Conscience

ABSTRACT The literature on the voting behaviour of members of parliament (MPs) has two prominent strands: the study of dissenting voting behaviour in whipped votes and of voting behaviour in votes of conscience. This article examines both aspects for the 19th German Bundestag (2017–2021). First, we assess the determinants of dissenting voting behaviour in all whipped votes in this term and compare them to the three previous terms of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship. Logistic multi-level regressions show that mostly political factors account for lower (offices, electoral security) or higher (parliamentary experience, GDR socialisation) defection rates. Second, we assess the determinants of voting behaviour on the organ donation reform in 2020. Theoretically, we identify a value conflict between self-determination and collective health interests that substantially differs from earlier free votes. Logistic regression analyses reflect this conflict: Besides individual religious denomination and union or party membership, it is especially constituency characteristics such as the share of Catholics that affect voting behaviour. Consequently, voting on free votes is affected by both political and personal characteristics of the MP. Overall, we show that MPs are exposed to various and, depending on what the vote is on, different influences that have to be reconciled.

Religion, social interactions, and COVID-19 incidence in Western Germany

This paper investigates how social interactions, as shaped by religious denomination, are related to COVID-19 incidence and associated mortality in Western Germany. We observe that the number of infections and deaths during the early pandemic phase were much higher in predominantly Catholic counties with arguably stronger family and social ties. The relationship was confirmed at the county level through numerous robustness checks, and after controlling for a series of characteristics and county fixed effects. At the individual level, we confirmed that Catholics, relative to non-Catholics, have tighter and more frequent interactions with their family and friends. Moreover, the intensity of social interaction was able to partially explain the relationship between COVID-19 incidence and share of Catholics at the county level. Our results highlight the number of dimensions that have to be taken into account when designing and implementing mitigation measures in the early stages of disease outbreaks.

On the Structure of Wealth-Holding in Pre-Famine Ireland

Very little is known about wealth-holding and its distribution in Ireland in the past. Here we employ death duty register data to analyse and identify a sample of the top wealth-holders in Ireland between the early 1820s and late 1830s. We examine the sources of their wealth and its regional spread, and compare them with their British counterparts. We also discuss the share of Catholics and Quakers among top wealth-holders.

Geostrategic Competition of Non-State Actors in Africa: The Roman Catholic Church in the Fight for the «Continent of Hope»)

The Catholic Church of Africa understand the spiritual and material needs of Africans, which allows Catholicism to compete quite successfully with other religions for their souls and hearts. The Vatican takes into account that modern Africa is a continent with a huge and rapidly growing population, facing such serious challenges as global poverty and disease, corruption, economic instability, political crises. This explains the humanitarian focus of the Catholic Church on the continent, which offers Africans, along with spiritual support, educational and medical services. The Catholic hierarchs of Africa and the Vatican face a number of painful issues, the future of Catholicism on the «continent of hope» depends to a large extent on their solution. Africa consists of more than 50 independent states, and the Catholic Church needs to build correct relations with completely different political regimes on the continent – from the extreme left to the right and nationalist. Since the colonial times, the Catholic hierarchy, to a much greater degree than the Protestant churches organized according to the network principle, was distinguished by its political commitment. However, in modern Africa, the Catholic Church must remain above political fights, to affirm its status as an arbiter in conflicts tearing up African society. Despite a completely optimistic picture of the development of Catholicism in Africa, the alarming signal for Catholic hierarchs is the fact that with an increase in the share of Catholics in the population of the continent, since 1970 there has been a decrease in their share in the Christian population. This trend persists for all the largest Catholic countries in Africa. Thus, Protestantism so far wins in the competition with Catholicism for the African flock. One of the most effective ways to strengthen the authority of the Catholic Church remains regular visits of the pontiff to African countries. It is during these visits that the Pope can establish contacts with the governments of the countries at the highest level, as well as with representatives of religious, public circles, cultural and business figures, communicating to them the opinion of the leadership of the Catholic Church on the broadest issues – not only humanitarian, but also socio-political character. Moreover, the visits of the Pope, organized as pilgrimages, are not only of great political, but also religious and emotional significance for the population of the country he is visiting, attracting large masses of people to participate in this event.

SOCIAL CHANGES IN IMPRESSIONABLE YEARS AND ADULT POLITICAL ATTITUDES: EVIDENCE FROM JEWISH EXPULSIONS IN NAZI GERMANY

This study provides evidence that individuals who grew up during the 1930's Jewish expulsions are less likely to show interest and participate in politics. The estimates imply that, at the mean, individuals in their impressionable ages at the time of the expulsions are about 13% less likely to be interested in politics and 26% less likely to participate in politics. These results are not found for individuals who were older at the time of the expulsions nor for those growing up during world War (WWII). Results are robust to fixed region and birth‐year characteristics, various definitions of impressionable ages, and composition bias induced by differential migration and mortality rates across regions and cohorts. The estimates are also not driven by other regional differences in 1930's political participation, party support, Catholic share, exposure and destruction during WWII, urbanization, and other regional characteristics. We provide evidence that the adverse effects on political attitudes we find are explained by a model of political participation emphasizing the role of civic skills and socioeconomic status acquired at younger ages. Exposure to the expulsions when young is associated with lower adult volunteerism, trust, church attendance, and socioeconomic status. (JELO12, D72, D74, J15)

Deep and Proximate Determinants of the World Income Distribution

This paper studies the deep and proximate determinants of the evolution of the cross‐country distribution of GDP per worker in the period 1960–2008 by a novel method based on an information criterion. We find that countries of our sample follow three distinctive growth regimes identified by two deep determinants, namely life expectancy at birth in 1960 and the share of Catholics in 1965, and that each regime is characterized by non‐linearities. Growth regimes appear to be the main cause of the increased inequality and polarization, while technological catch‐up, proxied by the initial level of GDP per worker, acts in the opposite direction. Finally, human capital marginally reduces polarization, while investment rates and employment growth have no distributional effect.

Does Private Schooling Affect Noncognitive Skills? International Evidence Based on Test and Survey Effort on PISA

ObjectiveThis study estimates the effects of private schooling on noncognitive outcomes as measured by patterns of student responses on exams and surveys.MethodsI use Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from over 300,000 individual students within 44 countries in 2009 and a historical natural experiment to estimate the causal impact of private schooling on student effort. Since nations with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 tend to have larger shares of private schooling today, the study uses the Catholic share of the population in 1900 as an exogenous instrument to predict whether a given child is in a private school in 2009.ResultsThe results suggest that private schooling increases student effort on PISA tests, as measured by test decline, while decreasing diligence on student surveys, as measured by careless answer patterns and nonresponse rates. In addition, I find that private schooling substantially increases PISA test scores, and that stronger noncognitive skills are associated with higher PISA scores.ConclusionSince this is the first study to connect school sector to these noncognitive outcomes, additional research on this topic is especially welcome. More research is also needed on the validity of measures such as test decline, careless answer patterns, and nonresponse rates.

Does Private Schooling Affect Non-Cognitive Skills? International Evidence Based on Test and Survey Effort on PISA

I use Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from over 300,000 individual students within 44 countries in 2009 and a historical natural experiment to estimate the causal impact of private schooling on student effort. Since nations with larger shares of Catholics in 1900 tend to have larger shares of private schooling today, the study uses the Catholic share of the population in 1900 as an exogenous instrument to predict whether a given child is in a private school in 2009. The results suggest that private schooling increases student effort on PISA tests, as measured by test decline, while decreasing diligence on student surveys, as measured by careless answer patterns and non-response rates. In addition, I find that private schooling substantially increases PISA test scores, and that stronger non-cognitive skills are associated with higher PISA scores.

Religion and aggregate support for redistribution

Aggregated data on regions within countries have been used to analyze the effect of religion and religiosity on aggregate support for redistribution. The data are from the International Social Survey Programme and a panel data set was constructed at the level of regions that were observed several times over the period 1985–2010. Empirical analyses show that a higher share of Catholics within a region has a positive effect on aggregate support for redistribution; a higher share of Protestants has a negative effect; religiosity (measured by church attendance) has no effect; and the effect of a religious denomination is non-linear and depends on whether or not it has a weak or a strong presence in a region. It was also found that Scandinavia is unusual in combining a high share of Protestants with high aggregate support for redistribution.

Impact of Regional Factors on Cohort Fertility: New Estimations at the District Level in Germany

Incorporating the regional context into fertility research has a long standing tradition. However, in Germany, fertility data at the district level only exist for period total fertility rates (TFR), but not for cohort total fertility rates (CTFR). Based on the 2011 census and birth statistics, we estimate the CTFR at the district level and analyse factors influencing their variation.First, we estimate the CTFR for the 1969-72 cohorts in all 402 German districts. The estimated CTFR differ strongly across German districts ranging between 1.05 and 2.01. Further, the estimated CTFR differ substantially from the known TFR values. This is mainly due to biases in the tempo component of the TFR, which are crucial in East German districts, university cities and in urban-rural comparisons. Therefore, the estimated CTFR allow for a better assessment of fertility differences across districts.Second, we analyse the differences in the newly estimated CTFR employing regression models. Composition effects such as a low proportion of highly educated women, a high share of Catholics or immigrants are significantly associated with higher CTFR in West German districts. However, regional opportunities are also important: A low population density, the availability of relatively spacious dwellings, a surplus of males, a small service sector and low unemployment rates are associated with higher fertility. Overall the analyses show regional factors are highly relevant for fertility.

The long-run effects of missionary orders in Mexico

This paper examines the long-run effects of different Catholic missionary orders in colonial Mexico on educational outcomes and Catholicism. The main missionary orders in colonial Mexico were all Catholic, but they belonged to different monastic traditions and adhered to different values. Mendicant orders were committed to poverty and sought to reduce social inequality in colonial Mexico by educating the native population. The Jesuit order, by contrast, focused educational efforts on the colony's elite in the city centers, rather than on the native population in rural mission areas. Using a newly constructed data set of the locations of 1,145 missions in colonial Mexico, I test whether long-run development outcomes differ among areas that had Mendicant missions, Jesuit missions, or no missions. Results indicate that areas with historical Mendicant missions have higher present-day literacy rates, and higher rates of educational attainment at primary, secondary and post-secondary levels than regions without a mission. Results show that the share of Catholics is higher in regions where Catholic missions of any kind were a historical present. Additional results suggest that missionaries may have affected long-term development by impacting people's access to and valuation of education.

An alternative instrument for private school competition

Empirical studies estimating the effect of private school competition on student outcomes commonly use the share of Catholics in the local population as an instrument for private school competition. I show that this is not a valid instrument since it is endogenous to private school competition and suggest using instead the local share of Catholics in the population in 1890 and its squared term. These instruments are very strong and are also exogenous to both student achievements and private school competition. I further show that using the current Catholic share as an instrument results in seriously flawed estimates of the effect of private school competition on math test scores and on educational attainment, to the extent that significant positive effects of private school competition on these outcome measures do not hold when the historical Catholic share in 1890 is used as an alternative instrument. The historical Catholic share in 1890 can also be applied to estimate the treatment effect of Catholic schools.

Fertility and Population in Ireland, North and South

This paper reviews and interprets recent demographic trends and prospects in the two Irelands, North and South. We discuss both the influence of religion on demographic behaviour, and the impact of demographic trends on the distribution by religion. In the Republic of Ireland, we show that the long-standing gap in marital fertility between Catholics and others had virtually disappeared by the 1980s. In Northern Ireland the gap is still there in the 1990s, though considerably reduced. However, estimates of its size hinge on how the significant proportion of non-respondents to the census question on religion are allocated. We identify some peculiarities of the non-respondent population which imply that it was more ‘Catholic’ in 1991 than first reports suggested. The Catholic share of Northern Ireland's population may accordingly be larger – 42 to 43 per cent – than previously thought. In both communities, the future of the Catholic share depends less on fertility than on migration patterns.

IX. Land Owned By Catholics in Ireland in 1688

The restoration settlement has long been the subject of controversy Petty in his Political anatomy calculated that by 1672 catholics had recovered a little less than a third of the ‘good land‘ of Ireland. Several alternative estimates were made at the time, such as that of Richard Lawrence, whose Interest of Ireland, published in 1682, put the catholic share at a little more than a fifth of the whole. But Petty remained the generally accepted authority until he was challenged by Butler, who estimated that ‘ at the accession of James II only at the outside one-seventh or one-eighth of the total area of the island remained in the possession of catholics ’