Religious trends in Switzerland: disentangling age, cohort, individual flux and period effects Marion Burkimsher Affiliated to University of Lausanne

Outline  Data  Cohort - age - period trends  Individual flux  Further research and conclusion

Outline  Data  Cohort - age - period trends  Individual flux  Further research and conclusion

1 Never 2 Only family ceremonies 3 Only religious celebrations 4 Religious celebrations & family events 5 Few times/year 6 About once/month 7 Every 2 weeks 8 Once a week 9 Several times a week 1 Never 2 Occasional 3 Regular Recoding religious attendance (…any religion)

1Never 2 Few times a year 3Once a month 4>once a week 5 Daily/almost daily 1 Never 2 Occasional 3 Frequent Recoding prayer frequency

Data issues  Data from 11 waves , but not 2010 & 2011  Many ‘missings’ - children not included, waves missing, individual dropouts (11,300 total sampled min. once)  Additional respondents added in but no apparent discontinuity in trends - reassuring that pre-2004 sample had not become less representative over time  Similar proportions in religious attenders found in European Social Survey (ESS) - reassuring!

Outline  Data  Cohort - age - period trends  Individual flux  Further research and conclusion

Indications of secularisation  Increase in % saying “no religion” from 11% to 16%  Overall decline in regular attenders from 27% to 22%  Increase in proportion who never pray from 28% to 33%

Summary of cohort-age-period attendance graphs  Young adult trough in attendance - but small sample numbers give ‘noisy’ data  Decline in within-cohort attendance rates -> period secularisation?  Cross-cohort differentials (esp. inter-generational non-replacement  Decline in those who never attend -> age effect?  Increase in proportion who occasionally attend

Summary of cohort-age-period prayer graphs  Young adult trough in attendance & prayer  Increase in within-cohort frequent pray rates -> age effect?  Cross-cohort differentials -> inter-generational non- replacement  Increase in those who never pray -> period effect?  Slight decline in proportion who pray occasionally - opposite to attendance trend -> divergence / polarisation of prayer behaviour

Outline  Data  Cohort - age - period trends  Individual flux  Further research and conclusion

Comments  The proportion of respondents who have stayed at the same level of religious attendance across all waves is 49%  The proportion of respondents who have changed level of attendance at some stage is 51% NB Some people have a valid response for only 1 wave, so actual flux will be higher!  The proportion of respondents who have at some time been regular attenders is 36% (cf. to annual average attendance rate of ~24%)  The proportion of respondents who at some stage have been ‘never’ attenders is 62%

Comments  The proportion of respondents who have stayed at the same level of prayer frequency across all waves is 59% ->Level of prayer is more stable than level of religious attendance  The proportion of respondents who have changed level of attendance at some stage is 41%  The proportion of respondents who have at some time have prayed frequently is 56% (cf. to annual average proportion of respondents who pray frequently ~45%)  The proportion of respondents who at some stage have ‘never’ prayed is 47%  The proportion who never attend (21%) is the same as the proportion who never pray (also 21%). However, of the respondents who regularly attend, 5% never pray! And of those who frequently pray, 22% never attend religious services!

Outline  Data  Age - period - cohort trends  Individual flux  Further research and conclusion

Further research  Should religiosity (especially attendance) be considered a ‘time-varying variable’?  Rich data source to investigate further, eg. sequence analysis to investigate individual flux in religiosity over time  Associate transitions of attendance with those of prayer and affiliation  Investigate gender differences  Investigate increase / decrease in religiosity with life events, eg. partnering, separation, illness, birth of children, etc…  Investigate if any association between change in religious attendance / prayer with change in life satisfaction  Compare Swiss panel data with other countries’ data (where available)

Secularisation?  It depends exactly what you look at, and where you draw the boundaries.  An increasing proportion of occasional attenders (decline in regular attenders and decline in ‘never’ attenders)  Year-on-year the proportion who have increased their level of attendance is the same as the proportion who have declined

Thank you!

1 Protestant / Reformed 2 Roman Catholic 3 Christian Catholic 4 Other Christian 5 Jewish 6 Muslim 7 Other 8 No religion or denomination 1 Protestant+ 2 Catholic 3 Other 4 None Recoding religious affiliation