Social Status and Religiosity in Christian Europe

Abstract: The relationship between social status and religiosity could be illuminating in the explanation of religiosity. This has been suggested by numerous sociologically minded authors. Although not consistent across all national samples, findings from the current study, based on World Values Survey data (1999-2001), did indicate the predominance of a moderate but positive association between low social status and high religiosity among European countries with a Christian heritage. Consequently, the results lent limited support to the classical deprivation thesis, since in none of the samples analyzed could a positive association between high social status and high religiosity could be found.