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Religious prohibition and sacrifice: evidence from the Amish restriction on high school education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2020

Liang Choon Wang Open the ORCID record for Liang Choon Wang [Opens in a new window]
Liang Choon Wang*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Monash Business School, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, 3800, Australia
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: liang.c.wang@monash.edu
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Abstract

The Amish collective objection to high school education and refusal to comply with compulsory schooling laws can be interpreted with a religious-club-good framework. According to the religious-club interpretation, the Amish use the restriction on secular education as a religious prohibition and sacrifice to improve the welfare of sect members. I exploit the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Wisconsin vs. Yoder, which exempts Amish children from compulsory high school education, as a policy shock to test several key predictions of the religious-club explanations. The evidence suggests that the successful restriction on high school education helped the Amish sect exclude individuals with low religious participation, lower members' shadow cost of time, and grow the sect through higher fertility.

Keywords

Amishcompulsory schoolingfertilityprohibitionreligious clubsacrifice

JEL classification

J1: Demographic Economics J2: Demand and Supply of Labor I2: Education and Research Institutions D71: Social Choice • Clubs • Committees • Associations
Type
Research Papers
Information
Journal of Demographic Economics , Volume 86 , Special Issue 3: The Economics of Religion , September 2020 , pp. 403 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain 2020

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