A chat on Religiosity and Education in the 19th Century with Mara Squicciarini

GrowthChat is a podcast on the social and cultural journey of humankind, hosted by Marco Lecci and Sascha O. Becker.  In this episode we ask Mara Squicciarini about her paper “Devotion and Development: Religiosity, Education, and Economic Progress in 19th-century France”, published in the American Economic Review in 2020. In her study, Mara finds that more religious locations had lower economic development after 1870. Schooling appears to be the key mechanism: more religious areas saw a slower adoption of the technical curriculum and a push for religious education. In turn, religious education was negatively associated with industrial development 10 to 15 years later.