Religion, religiosity and educational attainment: evidence from the compulsory education system in England.

This paper investigates the effect of religion on the educational attainment of pupils in their final year of compulsory education in England. The results show that pupils that identify with any religion have better academic performance than other pupils, after controlling for various family, parental and neighbourhood characteristics. The outperformance is reinforced by previous attendance at religious classes but there is no similar effect from considering religion to be very important to their life. Allowing for religion-specific effects shows that Muslim pupils outperform Christian pupils although the performance of the latter group is boosted by attendance at religious classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Applied Economics is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)