The Direction of Our Culture as Seen by Statistics

The book I mentioned recently, Religions Sudden Decline; What's Causing it, What Comes Next?, by Ronald F. Inglehart, 2021, discusses data collection over decades. It is survey data like others but tracks the same simple questions over several decades. They are questions like, "Do you believe in God?", "Of the following kinds of institutions, which do you trust the most (church, government, etc.)?" The surveys were done in dozens of countries on every continent in the world.

One aspect of religion versus secularization is the "push" aspect. He observed that in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland and the Netherlands (the latter not Nordic but lumped in) the move away from religion and toward secularization was slowed for some decades by the majority who was religious. Once the majority went secular rate of loss of religion was much faster, the drag of status quo was unhitched. He predicts this will happen in the U.S. It is a few years from majority secular but is picking up speed in that direction. As I have said many times we cannot predict social change with certainty but we can watch similar places and speculate about our own place.

One of the key questions in the same surveys done over and over around the world for decades in are questions about women's rights and reproductive rights. As religion is replaced with secularism the support for restrictions on women's rights and reproductive rights subsides. The more secular the more support for women's rights and reproductive rights, including abortion. They are, of course, at their base the same things.

The author's data shows cultural change is baked into a society almost always a generation or so before it happens. Thus, my children's attitudes were influenced when I was a child. He has various explanations for this that come from the time series data collected over decades. 

I hope one day the U.S. will have rights, health, education and welfare that is as good as that in these secular countries. We made some progress during the Obama years. Perhaps movement in a good direction will now continue.