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Religious Attendance Buffers the Impact of Unemployment on Life Satisfaction: Longitudinal Evidence from Germany
Author(s) -
Lechner Clemens M.,
Leopold Thomas
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/jssr.12171
Subject(s) - unemployment , attendance , life satisfaction , german , demographic economics , longitudinal data , longitudinal study , panel data , psychology , economics , demography , sociology , social psychology , medicine , economic growth , geography , econometrics , archaeology , pathology
This research used longitudinal data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel Study (SOEP) to examine whether religious attendance buffers the impact of unemployment on life satisfaction. Fixed effects models following 5,446 individuals up to three years after the transition to unemployment yielded two central findings. First, higher frequency of religious attendance was associated with smaller drops in life satisfaction. Second, only those who attended religious services on a weekly basis adapted to unemployment. These results suggest that religious attendance on a weekly basis can mitigate the psychological impact of unemployment.