Individual-Level Determinants of Religious Intergenerational Transmission: Evidence from Catholic Europe1

Although there is a rich body of research on religious transmission, relatively little attention has been given to studying this within specific religious traditions such as Catholicism, especially in Europe. Using data from the 2018 round of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), this study uses regression analysis to investigate individual-level determinants of religious transmission in 12 European countries with a Catholic tradition. We find support for the idea that parental religious socialization impacts adults' religiosity. More specifically, we find that childhood religiosity has explanatory effects separate from the impact of parental religiosity and that the religiosity of the father has a greater impact on offspring religiosity than the religiosity of the mother. We also find that childhood church attendance has a stronger effect in former communist countries than in western European countries. Overall, this study suggests the religious socialization perspective should be considered more in religious group-specific terms.