Church Affiliation and Life Course Transitions in The Netherlands, 1850-1970
The Netherlands, with dozens of different religious denominations, offer a fine laboratory to study religious differentials in demographic behavior. In this article, I analyze a large historical database with more than 30.000 reconstructed life courses, to answer the question whether statistically significant and consistent behavioral differences across life course domains existed between members of different churches. For each domain - marriage, co-residence, fertility and mortality - the question will be whether the specific ideology of the denominations accounts for the differences or wheth... Mehr ...