Determining the Impact of Religion on the Gender Gap and Conflict Using Natural Experiments

Why do some societies experience more unequal gender roles and conflict than others? Being religious or not potentially determines peoples’ values and decisions. This project tests the hypothesis that religion affects peoples’ decisions to an extent that is detectable at the societal level. We focus on religiosity, i.e. the intensity of religious beliefs rather than religious denominations. We will estimate the impact of religiosity on the gender gap and conflict, which has not been done before. To identify the causal impact, we cannot use laboratory experiments. Instead, we will use natural experiments - such as earthquakes - that exogenously distribute higher religiosity to some societies. We will link this exogenous variation to data on the gender gap and conflict.