The Effect of Education on American Muslims’ Religiosity

Education and religion are two fundamental institutions for social life. Education has been studied for various aspects of life and found that it has a vast impact on several mechanisms of individuals life in terms of their behaviors, perspectives, and preferences related to the changes on their socioeconomic status, marriage, fertility and health. Like education, religion has also considered as a significant determinant on individuals’ attitudes, perspectives, and preferences. In order to explain the nature of the relationship between education and religion, social scientists including the fathers of sociology, Marx, Weber, mill, and Durkheim have often argued the high level of education is more likely related to decline in religiosity. They predict that when countries develop economically and the levels of education rise, the need for religion will diminish. The debate about the prediction still going on and there is no consensus among social scientists about the future of religion. Using data from PEW American Muslim Survey 2008, this study aims to contribute to the existing discussion by studying the effect of schooling years on American Muslims religiosity. Our empirical findings suggest while education has negative effects on some religious measures, this is not valid for all religious variables