Not the opium of the people: Income and secularisation in a panel of Prussian counties 1886-1911

Becker, Sascha O. and Woessmann, Ludger (2020). Not the opium of the people: Income and secularisation in a panel of Prussian counties 1886-1911. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-854258

Data description (abstract)

The authors construct a unique panel of income and Protestant church attendance for six waves of up to 175 Prussian counties spanning 1886-1911; to study the interplay between religion and the economy. In particular income levels and religious participation. Their unique database on historical church attendance stems from the practice of the Protestant Church in Germany to count the number of participations in Holy Communion every year, which Hölscher (2001) gathered at the church-district (Kirchenkreis) level from regional archives covering modern Germany. The Sacrament Statistics (Abendmahlsstatistik) stem from a uniform annual survey organized by the Statistical Central Office at the Protestant Higher Church Council in Berlin from 1880 (with precursors) to World War II. Data collection was done by the parish priests on a preprinted form following uniform surveying directives. Regional Consistories combined these parish data into registers at the level of church districts, which usually comprised 10-20 adjacent parishes. Their main indicator of church attendance is the number of participations in Holy Communion divided by the number of Protestants in a district. Our income data refer to the average annual income of male elementary-school teachers, available every five years from 1886 to 1911 for all Prussian counties (Kreise) from Education Censuses (Galloway (2007)). Their dataset covers an unbalanced panel of 175 territorial entities (“counties”) in 1886-1911. This sample of Prussian counties constitutes the intersection between end-of-19 -century Prussia (for which income data are available) and modern Germany (for which church attendance data are available) and is thus not necessarily representative of Prussia or of Germany. To this dataset, we merge cross-sectional data for Prussian counties used in Becker and Woessmann (2009).

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