| Data collection method: |
The data source for church attendance is Hölscher (2001) based on Sacrament Statistics. The Protestant Regional Churches of Germany conducted annual surveys of “Expressions of Churchly Life” between 1880 (with precursors) and World War II. Their main indicator of church attendance is the “sacrament participation” (Hölscher (2001)), measured as the number of participations in Holy Communion divided by the number of Protestants in a church district. Hölscher kindly provided the authors with digital versions of the data as published in the Data Atlas. After assigning IDs to every church district (Kirchenkreis) and cross-checking the data, they combined the data into one panel dataset.
The data source for teacher income: Galloway (2007) based on Education Censuses. The data are drawn from the Galloway (2007) Prussia Database and are based on the following volumes of the Preussische Statistik: Volume 101, pp. 2-391 (for 1886); Volume 120, part II, pp. 2-313 (for 1891); Volume 151, part II, pp. 2-315 (for 1896); Volume 176, part III, pp. 2-485 (for 1901); Volume 209, part III, pp. 2- 513 (for 1906); and Volume 231, part II, pp. 2-599 (for 1911). The data were collected by the Prussian Statistical Office and reported at the level of administrative counties (Kreise). Teacher income data are available for all Prussian counties in all the years 1886, 1891, 1896, 1901, 1906, and 1911.
There are two changes in how teacher income is reported over time. First, in 1886 and 1891, teacher income covers only direct wage payments, but not extras such as housing allowances and any other allowances. From 1896 onwards, data include all components of income. To make data consistent over time, we pre-multiply direct wage payments in 1886 and 1891 by the county-specific ratio of total income over (only) wage payments observed in 1896.
In 1911, income is only reported as total income of male and female elementary- school teachers combined, whereas for all other years both genders are reported separately. In 1911, we impute income of male elementary-school teachers by pre-multiplying total income of elementary-school teachers by the county-specific share of male teachers in total income observed in 1906.
The control variables used in Table A3 are taken from the Prussian Population Census in 1871. First used in Becker and Woessmann (2009), who provide variable definitions and detailed documentation (see also iPEHD), they are based on Königliches Statistisches Bureau, Die Gemeinden und Gutsbezirke des Preussischen Staates und ihre Bevölkerung: Nach den Urmaterialien der allgemeinen Volkszählung vom 1. December 1871 (Berlin: Verlag des Königlichen Statistischen Bureaus, 1874).
They merge the church attendance and income data by assigning the income data, available at the level of the administrative county, to that church district (for which they have church attendance data) which contains the capital of the administrative county (same for the 1871 control variables available for administrative counties). In cases where several county capitals are located in the same district, they aggregated the county data up to the church district level (taking population- weighted averages of income data). To make regional entities comparable over time in face of territorial changes during our period of observation, they aggregated church-district and county data up to the highest level at which consistency over time is given. |
