Religion

The present paper is a first attempt to measure and explain, from an economic perspective, the religious behavior of Uruguayans (women in this stage), and compare the results with those obtained for some Latin American and developed countries. In this first stage, the efforts were concentrated in the interpretation of the religious behavior from an microeconomic perspective, considering the individual decision about church attendance and its frequency. With this aim, we analyze the relation between the religious degree of the individuals (measured through a variable created combining two questions of the used surveys: Are you religious? How often do you go to the temple?) and diverse personal characteristics such as age, education, marital status, among others (solely for women from 25 to 54 years old in the case of Uruguay). We confirmed that Uruguayans are less religious than the people of the other countries considered (Chile, Spain, Mexico and the United States), that the religious activity is more intense for women and older people, and that the education level have an ambiguous effect on the intensity of the religious activity. In addition, in the case of Uruguay, greater levels of deprivation imply greater levels of religious activity.