Abstract

Since the 1920s but especially since the 1960s a process of apostasy has taken place in the Netherlands. Because investigators started to look for its possible causes at an early stage, we know quite a lot about this process nowadays. However, notwithstanding ample discussion in the field of philosophy and politics as well in the media, we know little about the consequences of apostasy. We therefore raised the following question: does the ongoing process of apostasy have consequences in the domains of culture, demography, economy, politics and well-being? To answer this question we used survey data from more than 25,000 individuals over the period 1970-1995. We applied the so-called 'purging-method' to this data to test for instance what divorce rates over time would have been if since 1970 no apostasy had occurred. To control for possible spurious effects of apostasy, we also took into account the increasing level of education in the Netherlands, another quite dominant trend that is related to apostasy and the domains of interest. The most important results show that apostasy is responsible for the increase in the number of people who approve of abortion and euthanasia (cultural domain), for the increase in female labour participation (economic domain) and divorce (demography), and for the decrease in confessional party voting (politics). The increasing level of education favours both female labour participation and the number of people who approve of abortion and euthanasia. In the domain of well-being the impact of apostasy and increasing level of education are either moderate or absent.

How to Cite:

te Grotenhuis, M., Scheepers, P. & Eisinga, R., (1998) “Welke gevolgen heeft ontkerkelijking?: een verkenning op het terrein van cultuur, demografie, economie, politiek en welzijn in Nederland tussen 1970 en 1995”, Tijdschrift voor Sociologie 19(1), 5–32. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/sociologos.86435