Aging, Social Developmental, and Cultural Factors in Changing Patterns of Religious Involvement Over a 32-Year Period

Abstract

Religious change has been studied from the perspectives of both individual development and societal progress, but a lack of long-term longitudinal data has limited the capacity to examine them simultaneously. This study uses repeated cross-sectional data from the World Values Survey/European Values Study, covering 80 nations over the period from 1981 to 2013 to estimate age, period, and cohort effects on mean changes in the subjective importance of God and attendance at religious services. A cross-classified mixed model approach was used, examining both random effects indicating between-country differences in these changes and fixed factors unifying them in a broader framework. Older age was associated with greater personal and organizational religious involvement in a large majority of societies, but the strength of this association differed by culture, with the largest mean effects occurring in Western nations. Period effects were detected in many cultural areas but were very heterogeneous in direction and magnitude. Period changes were related to national wealth, with increase in per capita gross domestic product being related to declines in mean religious involvement. Cohort effects were in evidence in relatively few societies. These results indicate that both individual aging processes and changes in the material environment may influence changes in religious involvement, in keeping with both psychological and sociological theory, but that culture also plays a role in the nature and speed of these changes.