Human Security And Religious Change: An Analysis Of 65 Societies Across 1981–2014

Abstract

Previous research has provided substantial support for the modernization theory by demonstrating that societies with high levels of human security are significantly less religious than societies with low levels of human security. This study presents a stronger assessment of the theory by testing a hypothesis that society's level of human security also shapes trends in religious commitment over time. In our analysis, we use repeated cross-sectional survey data from 65 countries covering the 33year time span from 1981 to 2014. Our empirical design draws on multilevel regression modeling in predicting country-level differences in religious change. Our findings demonstrate that high levels of human security were significantly linked with decline in religiosity during this period whereas low levels of security, conversely, were associated with rising emphasis on religion. The collapse of the prevailing belief system that occurred in ex-communist countries during this period tended to produce growing emphasis on religion, but the extent to which this happened depended on society's level of human security. Overall, our results provide strong support for the revised version of secularization theory, which claims that declining religiosity depends on high levels human security. JEL Classification: Z.

How Exceptional Is the West? An Investigation of Worldwide Trends in Societal‐Average Levels of Religiosity, 1981–2020

“…The items used in this scale were selected because they represent multiple dimensions of religiosity (religious self‐identification, religious behavior, and the self‐reported importance of the divine) and because they have been asked across all WVS/EVS survey waves. These items have, moreover, been commonly used in scales of religiosity constructed using WVS/EVS data (Höllinger and Muckenhuber 2019; Ruck, Bentley, and Lawson 2018; Zhirkov and Inglehart 2019). To construct the religiosity scale, the component items were standardized and added together, with the resultant sum again standardized, for a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1 across all individuals.…”

Religiosity, Smoking and Other Risky Behaviors

“…Orthodox Christianity (Zhirkov and Inglehart, 2019). This suggests that religiosity remained strong in Romania under communism and during transition, but its rising visibility during the transition was also supported by the then rising economic insecurity.…”

“…But it is in line with secularization theory 1 suggesting a strong positive relationship between human insecurity and religiosity (Inglehart, 1997;McCleary, 2003, 2005;Inglehart and Norris, 2012;Iyer, 2016). While over longer periods across countries globally a rise in human (economic and physical) security through economic and societal development, education, urbanization, and social institutions has caused a decline in religiosity, this trend was weaker under communist regimes and in particular very strong among countries under 1 While classical secularization theory was predicting the end of the relevance of religion in social life, more recent developments of religious revival in many countries and global religious tensions have also caused a significant rise in academic research in the social sciences (see Smith, 2008;Gorski and Altinordu, 2008;Iyer, 2016;Zhirkov and Inglehart, 2019).…”

“…Zhirkov and Inglehart (2019) construct their measure of religiosity as a simple mean of all available internal and external religious activity variables together.…”