Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T07:31:51.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Religious prohibition and sacrifice: evidence from the Amish restriction on high school education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Liang Choon Wang Open the ORCID record for Liang Choon Wang [Opens in a new window]
Liang Choon Wang*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Monash Business School, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

The Amish collective objection to high school education and refusal to comply with compulsory schooling laws can be interpreted with a religious-club-good framework. According to the religious-club interpretation, the Amish use the restriction on secular education as a religious prohibition and sacrifice to improve the welfare of sect members. I exploit the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Wisconsin vs. Yoder, which exempts Amish children from compulsory high school education, as a policy shock to test several key predictions of the religious-club explanations. The evidence suggests that the successful restriction on high school education helped the Amish sect exclude individuals with low religious participation, lower members' shadow cost of time, and grow the sect through higher fertility.

Keywords

Amishcompulsory schoolingfertilityprohibitionreligious clubsacrifice

JEL classification

J1: Demographic Economics J2: Demand and Supply of Labor I2: Education and Research Institutions D71: Social Choice • Clubs • Committees • Associations
Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 86 , Special Issue 3: The Economics of Religion , September 2020 , pp. 403 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramitzky, Ran (2008) The limits of equality: insights from the Israeli Kibbutz. Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, 1111–1159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abramitzky, Ran (2009) The effects of redistribution on migration: evidence from the Israeli Kibbutz. Journal of Public Economics 93, 498–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aimone, Jason, Iannaccone, Laurence R., Makowsky, Michael D. and Rubin, Jared (2013) Endogenous group formation via unproductive costs. Review of Economic Studies 80, 1215–1236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Angrist, Joshua D. and Krueger, Alan B. (1991) Does compulsory schooling attendance affect schooling and earnings. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106, 979–1014.Google Scholar
Berman, Eli (2000) Sect, subsidy, and sacrifice: an economist's view of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Quarterly Journal of Economics 115, 905–953.Google Scholar
Berman, Eli and Iannaccone, Laurence R. (2006) Religious extremists: the good, the bad, and the deadly. Public Choice 128, 109–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Eli, Iannaccone, Laurence R. and Ragusa, Giuseppe (2018) From empty pews to empty cradles: fertility decline among European Catholics. Journal of Demographic Economics 84, 149–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Eli and Laitin, David (2008) Religion, terrorism and public goods: testing the club model. Journal of Public Economics 92, 1942–1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, Eli, and Stepanyan, Ara (2004) How many radical Islamists? Indirect evidence from five countries. UCSD Mimeo. https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~elib/funfert.pdfGoogle Scholar
Callaway, Brantly and Li, Tong (2019) Quantile treatment effects in difference in differences models with panel data. Quantitative Economics 10, 1579–1618.Google Scholar
Card, David (1999) The causal effect of education on earnings. In Ashenfelter, Orley and Card, David (eds.), Handbook of Labor Economics 3(A), pp. 1801–1863. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Carvalho, Jean-Paul and Koyama, Mark (2016) Jewish emancipation and schism: economic development and religious change. Journal of Comparative Economics 44, 562–584.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carvalho, Jean-Paul, Koyama, Mark and Sacks, Michael (2017) Education, identity, and community: lessons from Jewish emancipation. Public Choice 171, 119–143.Google Scholar
Choy, James P. (in press) Religious rules as a means of strengthening family ties: theory and evidence from the Amish. Journal of Comparative Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2019.12.007.Google Scholar
Edmonston, Barry (2002) The Undercount in the 2000 Census. Baltimore, Maryland: The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Population Reference Bureau.Google Scholar
Edmonston, Barry and Schultze, Charles (1995) Modernizing the U.S. Census: Panel on Census Requirements in the Year 2000 and Beyond. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.Google Scholar
Ericksen, Julia A., Ericksen, Eugene P., Hostetler, John A. and Huntington, Gertrude E. (1979) Fertility patterns and trends among the Old Order Amish. Population Studies 33, 255–276.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frölich, Markus and Melly, Blaise (2010) Estimation of quantile treatment effects with Stata. Stata Journal 10, 423–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, Ottie A., and Irene Garrett, R. (1998) True Stories of the X-Amish. Horse Cave, KY: New Leuben, Incorporated (New Life).Google Scholar
Greksa, Lawrence P. (2002) Population growth and fertility patterns in an Old Order Amish settlement. Annals of Human Biology 29, 192–201.Google Scholar
Hostetler, John A. (1993) Amish Society. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hostetler, John A. and Huntington, Gertrude E. (1971) Children in Amish Society: Socialization and Community Education. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Huntington, Gertrude E. (1994) Persistence and change in Amish education. In Kraybill, Donald B. and Olshan, Marc A. (eds.), The Amish Struggle with Modernity, pp. 77–95. Hanover: University Press of New England.Google Scholar
Iannaccone, Laurence R. (1992) Sacrifice and stigma: reducing free-riding in cults, communes, and other collectives. Journal of Political Economy 100, 271–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Islam, Asadul, Ouch, Chandarany, Smyth, Russell and Wang, Liang C. (2016) The long-term effects of civil conflicts on education, earnings, and fertility: evidence from Cambodia. Journal of Comparative Economics 44, 800–820.Google Scholar
Keim, Albert N. (1975) Compulsory Education and the Amish: The Right Not to be Modern. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Kraybill, Donald B. (2001) The Riddle of Amish Culture. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Kraybill, Donald B. and Bowman, Carl F. (2001) On the Backroad to Heaven: Old Order Hutterites, Mennonites, Amish, and Brethren. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Kraybill, Donald B. and Nelson Hostetter, C. (2001) Anabaptist World USA. Scottdale: Herald Press.Google Scholar
McConnell, David L. and Hurst, Charles E. (2006) No “Rip Van Winkles” here: Amish education since Wisconsin v. Yoder. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 37, 236–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyers, Thomas J. (1993) Education and schooling. In Kraybill, Donald B. (ed.), The Amish and the State, pp. 87–106. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Meyers, Thomas J. and Nolt, Steven M. (2005) An Amish Patchwork. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
National Population Commission (2000) Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 1999. Calverton, Maryland: National Population Commission and ORC/Macro.Google Scholar
Osili, Una Okonkwo and Long, Bridget Terry (2008) Does female schooling reduce fertility? Evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Development Economics 87, 57–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, Jin Heum (1994) Estimation of Sheepskin Effects and Returns to Schooling Using the Old and the New CPS Measures of Educational Attainment. Working Paper No. 335, Industrial Relations Section, Princeton University.Google Scholar
Pollack, Randy Beth (1981) Culture change in an Amish community. Central Issues in Anthropology 3, 51–67.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, Flood, Sarah, Goeken, Ronald, Grover, Josiah, Meyer, Erin, Pacas, Jose and Sobek, Matthew (2020) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series USA: Version 10.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V10.0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spence, Michael (1973) Job market signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics 87, 355–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar