The impact of education on time spent in religious activities: evidence from Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the impact of increased education, due to an exogenous education reform, on time spent in religious activities by utilizing the Turkish Time Use Survey data. The education reform significantly rises individuals’ years of schooling. We also document that for women, increased education has a negative causal impact on the allocation of time to religious activities. However, there are no significant effects of education on men’s time spent in religious activities. As a result, we suggest that education plays an important role in altering individuals’ religious behaviour through its effects on preferences.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• religion
• time use
• compulsory schooling reform

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D01
• J0
• I2
• Z12

Acknowledgment

The authors are thankful to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) for granting permission to use Time Use Survey Micro Data Set, 2014-2015.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Detailed results for the robustness checks are available upon request.