International Sociology

http://iss.sagepub.com/

Secularization in Poland and Spain after the democratic transition: A cohort

analysis
Miguel Requena and Mikolaj Stanek
International Sociology 2013 28: 84
DOI: 10.1177/0268580912466551
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://iss.sagepub.com/content/28/1/84

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

International Sociological Association

Additional services and information for International Sociology can be found at:
Email Alerts: http://iss.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
Subscriptions: http://iss.sagepub.com/subscriptions
Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

>> Version of Record - Jan 17, 2013

What is This?

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

466551

13

ISS28110.1177/0268580912466551International SociologyRequena and Stanek

Article

Secularization in Poland and

Spain after the democratic
transition: A cohort analysis

International Sociology
28(1) 84101
The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0268580912466551
iss.sagepub.com

Miguel Requena

National Distance Education University (UNED), Spain

Mikolaj Stanek

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain

Abstract
The objective of this article is to determine the extent to which the evolution of religiosity in
Spain and Poland in their post-democratic transition periods has been affected by the process
of generational replacement. For Spain data are drawn from several surveys carried out by the
Spanish Centre for Sociological Studies (CIS) between 1980 and 1996. For Poland the data come
from the Polish General Social Survey and ISSP covering 19922008. Results show two radically
different patterns of religious change. The fall in religious practice in Spain observed throughout
the first 16 years after the political transition was due mostly to the inter-cohort change that
affects each new generation born after 1950. In the case of Poland, post-transition change is less
marked and due mainly to decline in religious practice on the individual level. The study also
observes that the cohorts of Poles born during and after the fall of communism are significantly
less religious than older cohorts.

Keywords
Cohorts, Poland, post-authoritarian societies, religiosity, Spain

There is a great deal of empirical evidence that demonstrates that in most European
countries institutional religion has experienced a sharp decline over the past few decades
(Halman and Draulans, 2006; Voas, 2009). The advance of secularization in many
European societies is distinctive in light of the still vigorous religious life on other continents (Bruce, 2002; Caplow, 1985; Filali-Ansary, 1996; Sasaki and Suzuki, 1987). This
Corresponding author:
Mikolaj Stanek, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, C/
Albasanz, 2628, Despacho 3F3, Madrid, CP28037, Spain.
Email: mstanek@geps.es

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

85

Requena and Stanek

has led some authors to suggest a reformulation of the secularization thesis, indicating
that Europe is not so much a pioneer of a universal phenomenon, but rather an exception
(Berger, 1999; Berger et al., 2008; Davie, 2007). In any case, it should also be noted that
comparative studies have revealed that the progress of secularization varies greatly
across European countries, so the decreased social significance of religion on this continent cannot be considered homogeneous or unilinear (Bruce, 2002; Casanova, 1994;
Pickel, 2009). Over the last few decades the field of sociology of religion has put considerable effort into providing an accurate explanation for the diversity of secularization
trajectories in Europe. Some researchers have suggested that political transformations
determine the framework within which religious life develops on a national level (Davie,
2000; Martin, 1978). Therefore, it is particularly interesting to analyse the development
of religiosity in European countries that have experienced profound changes in their
political systems, as is the case in Poland and Spain.
Until now analyses of religiosity in both countries have predominantly centred on the
immediate effects (period effects) of the change in political context linked to the transition to a democratic system (Mariaski, 2011; Prez-Agote, 2010; Requena, 2005;
Requena and Stanek, 2012; Tomka, 2011). However, societal change can occur not only
because individuals change their behaviour in a specific moment, but also because of an
ongoing massive process of personal replacement in which older cohorts are succeeded
by younger ones with different patterns of behaviour or attitudes (Ryder, 1965).
Distinguishing between period effect and cohort effects is fundamental to understanding
the sources of social change in both countries.
The general aim of this article is to determine the extent to which religious evolution
in later cohorts varies relative to the kind of relationship that existed between the authoritarian state and the institutionalized religion in two contrasting European cases: Spain,
which for a large part of the 20th century saw a close alliance between the Catholic
Church and the Francoist political dictatorship, and Poland, where the Catholic Church
was clearly in conflict with the communist regime. To be more specific, this article
examines how the replacement of older generations by newer ones that were socialized
during the decline of the authoritarian regimes or in a non-authoritarian political context
has affected religiosity in both countries during the first 16 years after their political
transitions. Our analytical strategy is twofold: first, we measure the differences in levels
of religiosity among cohorts socialized during the authoritarian regimes and during the
beginning of democratic periods; second, by using decomposition techniques and logistic regression modelling we analyse how religiosity has been affected by the change in
generational composition in both societies over approximately one and a half decades
after the end of the Franco regime in Spain and the fall of communism in Poland.

Background
Despite increasing criticism, the secularization theory still offers a useful explicative
framework of the current processes of religious change (Bruce, 2011; Norris and
Inglehart, 2004). This theoretical perspective claims that the diminishing significance of
religion in social and individual life is a consequence of an inherent tension between
modernity and religion (Mller, 2011; Pickel, 2011). In this sense, secularization is

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

86

International Sociology 28(1)

understood to be part of a broad societal process of modernization involving a series of

interrelated phenomena, such as technological change, the development of the modern
state, the spread of rational-scientific thought, the process of urbanization and the disappearance of small local communities (Bruce, 2002). Given a context of modernization,
the secularization thesis asserts that more recent cohorts are less religious than earlier
cohorts at the same age. In other words, the advances of modernization affect successive
cohorts differently, leading younger generations to have lower levels of religiosity than
their predecessors (Firebaugh and Harley, 1991; Voas, 2010). Under the circumstances of
an ongoing modernization, the demographic process of cohort replacement itself fosters
the secularization.
The intergenerational variation in the levels of religiosity of successive cohorts can be
attributed to both structural changes and contextual transformations that occur in a given
society (Voas and Doebler, 2011). First of all, the differences in the degree of secularization between generations are linked to the transformations in the composition of the
successive cohorts brought about by increased levels of education, larger percentages of
urban population or greater participation by women in the labour market (De Graaf and
Te Grotenhuis, 2008). Second, along with changes in the composition of the population,
religiosity is affected by societal and contextual factors that cause religion and its institutions to lose the capacity to influence how certain institutions function (the state, public
administrations, educational system, mass media, etc.), as well as to control and determine the behaviour, beliefs and attitudes of individuals (Chaves, 1994; Dobbelaere,
2002). Although the social significance of the religious sphere has decreased for the
entire population to a greater or lesser degree, the change is sharpest among the youngest
generations. Individuals experiences at ages of greatest cognitive development, when
they are not yet fully mature, play a decisive role in their later ideas and behaviour
(Hagenaars, 1990; Mannheim, 1952), particularly in their religious beliefs and practices.
From this perspective, intergenerational metabolism itself is the decisive argument to
explain this social change: it is not necessary for a radical change on the individual level
to occur in order for societies to change, as younger generations start to take the place of
the older ones.
Many studies carried out in Western European countries, such as the United
Kingdom, the Netherlands and West Germany, indicate that the advance of secularization is increasingly evident as successive cohorts are socialized in contexts in which
the link between religion and other important social spheres has been weakened (De
Graaf and Te Grotenhuis, 2008; Kaufmann et al., 2012; Voas, 2009, 2010; Wolf, 2008).
Nevertheless, the continuity of the secularization process associated with the succession of cohorts subject to societal processes of modernization is not so clear in societies which undergo profound and sudden political and social changes (Wohlrab-Sahr,
2011). The contextual factors of a given historical moment, such as coercive secularization or democratization of social life, could accelerate or delay the process of religious change associated with cohort replacement. For example, some recent studies
indicate that one of the causes of the religious revival in Romania and the former GDR
is caused by generational change as new cohorts socialized within a context of religious freedom replace those educated during the period of forced secularization (Lois,
2011; Voicu and Constantin, 2012). Therefore, countries that have transitioned from

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

87

Requena and Stanek

authoritarianism to democracy provide particularly interesting case studies in which to

observe and analyse this interaction between cohort effects and period effects.
Democratic transition after a prolonged authoritarian regime represents a decisive
change in the context in which successive generations are socialized and can be considered a key factor in the acceleration or delay of secularization processes. This contextual change could be even more decisive if in the past there had been a close positive
link or manifest antagonism between religion and politics.
During the second half of the 20th century Spain and Poland could be considered
paradigmatic cases of two models of authoritarian systems in which institutional religion
played radically opposing roles. In Spain, the close alliance between the Catholic Church
and the Franco regime translated into a religious hegemony imposed on many aspects of
social life in which Catholicism became a fundamental symbolic instrument to legitimize
the dictatorship (Box, 2010). The Catholic Church acquired extraordinary influence over
large swathes of the public sphere and private life, including a monopoly on teaching
religious doctrine and on moral direction. Although in the 1960s and 1970s the ideological pressure had already started to diminish, the death of Franco in 1975 and the subsequent transformation of the political system in Spain substantially changed the
relationship between the Catholic Church and the state. Although it maintained certain
privileges over other religions (for example, funding for educational and pastoral activities), the political and social influence of the Catholic Church substantially diminished
(Casanova, 1994; Linz, 1993).
Historically, in Poland the strong association between Catholicism and national identity was consolidated after the country was partitioned by the three neighbouring empires.
In the late 1940s the imposition of a totalitarian communist regime monopolized by a
single party led to a forced social, economic and cultural transformation in Poland
(Varga, 1995). The fact that it was a foreign power imposing the totalitarian and atheist
regime converted Catholicism into an ideology of national unity once again, with the
Church as its main guardian. This situation converted the Church into a space in which
civil society developed, further reinforced by its open and inclusive attitude towards all
currents of political opposition, regardless of their ideologies (Mach, 2000). However,
the start of the political transition in 1989 and 1990 created a new situation for the Polish
Catholic Church in which it gradually lost its position as the repository of national
identity.
The different positions of the Catholic Church within the political regimes in Poland
and Spain have had very different implications for the later development of religious
behaviour in those countries. For instance, the Spanish detached themselves from
Catholicism as political coercion was relaxed. Period effect analysis shows that secularization in Spain was especially intense during the political transition in the second half of
1970s (Requena, 2005; Requena and Stanek, 2012). In contrast, in post-communist
Poland the memory of the Catholic Churchs opposition to the regime helped maintain
high levels of religious practice in the first years after the fall of communism (Requena
and Stanek, 2012). Nevertheless, as the new system stabilizes, it is to be expected that the
integrating function of Catholicism and its symbolic attraction will decrease and cease to
slow the religious change associated with modernization, which manifests in a gradual
decrease in levels of religiosity (Bruce, 1999; Martin, 2011).

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

88

International Sociology 28(1)

Given these antecedents, this work analyses the religious change that occurred in
Spain and Poland in the years following their democratic transitions. In addition to comparing the magnitude of the change in both countries, our specific objective is to figure
out how much of it can be due to individual religious change (within cohorts) and how
much can be attributed to generational replacement (across cohorts). To do this we studied the change in religious practice over 16 years, starting two years after the democratic
transitions 1980 in Spain, two years after the democratic Constitution of 1978 was
approved; and 1992 in Poland, two years after the first completely democratic elections
were held in 1990.1 Our expectations, based on the thesis of the relevance of the interrelation between religion and politics for religious change, are: (1) that in equivalent
periods of time, there has been less religious change in Poland than in Spain; (2) that
after the democratic transitions generational change has been stronger than individual
change in Spain, where the Catholic Church was strongly implicated with the authoritarian political regime and younger cohorts socialized during the decline of the Francoist
dictatorship have distanced themselves from institutional religion since their youth; (3)
that in Poland, where Catholicism was a crucial element in the opposition and resistance
to the totalitarian political regime, generational change has been lower and possibly
weaker than individual change because younger generations perceived a positive link
between Catholicism and political freedom, did not feel the political urge to move away
from religion and, accordingly, their contribution to societal religious change should
have been less intense than in Spain; and (4) that the religious behaviour of cohorts
socialized after the democratic transition is significantly different than that of cohorts
socialized in authoritarian contexts.

Data and methods

The empirical information that we worked with is taken from a series of cross-sectional data based on national sample surveys in both countries. The data about Spain
come from four studies carried out by the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS)
covering 1980, 1985, 1992 and 1996. The data available for Poland cover 1992, 1997,
2003 and 2008 and were obtained from the Polish General Social Survey (Polski
Generalny Sonda Spoeczny, PGSS), with the exception of the 2003 study which was
carried out within the ISSP (International Social Survey Programme).2 The selection of
data sources was aimed at creating a comparative framework for both countries, so for
each country four points were selected separated by approximately equal intervals of
time (between four and six years). Although, obviously, it would be possible to analyse
more recent data for Spain, the 16 years considered in both cases allow the intensity of
religious change to be gauged over equivalent periods of exactly the same duration.
The data used for Spain come from CIS Data Base studies 1237 (N = 2489), 1456 (N =
2485), 2001 (N = 2486), and 2230 (N = 2485). The data for Poland have been taken
from PGSS 1992 (N = 1647), PGSS 1997 (N = 2401), ISSP 2003 (N = 1277) and PGSS
2008 (N = 1203).
For theoretical as well as methodological reasons, the present analysis is based on
religious practice, understood as taking part in mass. On the one hand, religious practice
is one of the most conspicuous aspects of any religion, and it can be interpreted as a

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

89

Requena and Stanek

ritual for maintaining the institutional creed (Prez-Agote et al., 1993). This makes it
ideal for measuring change in church-oriented religiosity. On the other hand, using religious practice is also relevant from the methodological point of view because it is the
most visible aspect of religiosity and, consequently, the easiest to research through surveys, producing the most reliable kind of information for researching change over time.
This study identifies as practising Catholics those people who go to mass at least once a
month, which is the criterion normally used in studies on religiosity (Mller, 2009). The
indicator of religious practice is available in all the surveys mentioned above and the
scales used to measure attendance to mass in Spain and Poland are similar, facilitating
the homogenization process.
After presenting a summary of descriptive statistics which compares the magnitude
and speed of religious change in both countries, two main analysis techniques are used
in our study. First, using the cumulative data set for all the years examined, we carried
out a decomposition based on a simple regression model to distinguish the two proximate sources of overall or aggregate change in religious practice in both countries: net
change among individuals and population replacement (Firebaugh, 1997). Due to the
categorical and binary nature of our dependent variable, we used logistic regression to
estimate for each country a model of the odds of religious practice between practising
Catholics (PC) and the rest of population (1 PC) according to the following
equation:
PC/(1 PC) = exp [b0 + b1(YEAR) + b2(COHORT) + e].
This regression model permits us to estimate intra-cohort and inter-cohort change
throughout the periods considered. In the formula, b0 is the model intercept, b1 is the
estimated slope for yearly change controlled for cohort, b2 is the estimated slope of
the difference between adjacent cohorts and e is the error term. The above equation
takes the exponential form and estimates the odds of religious practice. It also can be
expressed in logarithmic form in order to estimate the logit (the natural logarithm of
the odds) that an individual will be a practising Catholic:
logit (PC/[1 PC]) = Ln (PC/[1 PC]) = b0 + b1(YEAR) + b2(COHORT) + e.
Firebaugh (1997) showed that overall change can be decomposed through the following two expressions: b1 (YRT YR1) for the estimated contribution of change
within cohorts or individual change; and b2 (CT C1) for the estimated contribution
of change across cohorts, where YRT is the year of the final survey, YR1 is the year
of the first one, CT is the average year of birth for the sample in the last survey and
C1 is the average year of birth for the sample in the first one. These two components
can be added to calculate overall change. Since we used logistic regression, we
decomposed the logit (that is, the odds ratio logarithm) of religious practice between
two years (the overall change) into the two aforementioned components using the
following equation:
Ln [PCT/(1 PCT) / PC1/(1 PC1)] = b1 (YRT YR1) + b2 (CT C1).3

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

90

International Sociology 28(1)

The target of this first step is mainly exploratory: knowing with some precision how
much of the change can be attributed to individual religious change and to cohort composition during the specified periods in both countries and, to the extent possible, disregarding age effects. Unfortunately, it appears that there is no fool proof statistical formula
for distinguishing age, period and cohort effects due to the well-known identification
problem that plagues this kind of analysis (Glenn, 2005).4 Therefore it was necessary to
employ informal means of inspecting data and assessing those effects. For reasons
explained below, we think that the data from Spain and Poland legitimately allow us to
ignore age-specific effects in the explanation of aggregate change of religiosity in both
countries.
Second, in order to separate the effect of intergenerational change from other structural factors, a logistic regression model for each country was estimated, which, in addition to the year of survey (YR) and cohort (C),5 included a series of control variables
representing sex (S), education (ED), employment status (ES) and the size of the municipality (SM) in which the people surveyed resided. The model can be expressed as
follows:
[PC/(1 PC)] = exp [b0 + b1(C) + b2(YR) + b3(S) + b4(ED) + b5(ES) + b6(SM)].
The secularization thesis predicts that urbanization and a general increase in the
level of education are crucial factors in the diminishing social significance of religion
(Wallis and Bruce, 1998). Indeed, the improvement in the general level of education
and the processes of urbanization in Spain and Poland throughout the second half of
the 20th century could be considered major determinants of religious change in both
countries. In addition, there is extensive empirical evidence that sex continues to
determine the differences in levels of religious participation in modern societies
(Tilley, 2003). The aim of this second exercise is simply to analyse cohort and period
effects when the structural factors that advance the process of secularization are held
constant.

Results
In the 16 years after the democratic transitions in Spain (19801996) and Poland
(19922008) there was a significant drop in levels of religious practice. However, the
decrease was much more pronounced in Spain where the number of practising Catholics
dropped 14% while in Poland it only dropped 7% meaning that the odds ratios of
being a practising Catholic in Spain were 0.56 between the end and start of the period,
compared to 0.71 in Poland. In both countries the change in attending mass over the
time periods analysed, that is, the difference between this indicator at the start and end
of the periods, is statistically significant (Z test, p < .000 in both cases). But given that
the level of religiosity at the beginning of these periods was lower in Spain than in
Poland, not only was the absolute loss of religiosity greater in Spain but also the relative loss (28.7%) compared to Poland (9.5%). In other words, during these 16 years
practising Catholics in Spain decreased at an annual rate of 2.1%, while in Poland the
decrease was only 0.6%.

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

91

Requena and Stanek

Table 1. Within cohort, cross-cohort and total change in percentage of practising Catholics in
Spain (19801996) and Poland (19922008).
Cohorts

Spain

1980
%

Poland
1996
N

Changes

1992
N

2008
N

Before 1901 45.7% 35

19011910
71.8% 177
33.3%
15
19111920
66.9% 299
67.2% 116
78.7% 127
100.0%
2
19211930
61.2% 405
62.0% 287
73.1% 201
76.5%
81
19311940
56.4% 408
53.1% 356
72.6% 307
80.3%
132
19411950
40.5% 489
41.2% 337
76.0% 242
71.2%
184
19511960
26.9% 472
24.5% 413
75.7% 313
65.6%
273
19611970
27.9% 129
16.2% 505
72.9% 258
69.9%
196
19711980
20.0% 431
74.6% 118
59.1%
193
19811990
60.4%
212
All cohorts
49.0% 2414 34.8% 2029 74.5% 1566 67.5%
1273
Average within cohort change (weighted by size)
Estimated change in religious practice within and across cohorts: logistic regression
Overall change: ln [(PT/(1 PT)/(P1/(1 P1)] = b1 (YRT YR1) + b2 (CT C1) =
Within-cohort: b1 (YRT YR1) =
Cross-cohort: b2 (CT C1) =

Spain

Poland

19801996

19922008

38.4%
0.4%
0.8%
3.3%
0.8%
2.5%
11.7%

14.1%***
4.1%
0.566
0.155*
0.411***

21.3%
3.4%
7.7%
4.8%
10.2%
3.0%
15.5%

7.0%***
2.7%
0.362
0.231*
0.131***

***p < .000; ** p < .01.

Note: Practising Catholics are those who attend mass at least once a month.
Source: CIS Data Base (studies 1237 and 2230) for Spain and Polish General Social Survey 1992 and ISSP 2008 for Poland.

Table 1 shows the basic data related to change in levels of religious practice in both
countries. Because the focus of this work is on cohort replacement, the data are organized to compare the total change with the change in each of the cohorts included in the
Spanish and Polish samples. Simply observing these percentages suggests that religious change was not only greater in Spain than Poland, but also that the impact of
generational change was stronger in the former: that is, the average change among
cohorts was greater.
Table 1 also includes the decomposition using logistic regression of the logit of religious
practice into its two components: individual or intra-cohort change and intergenerational
change. This decomposition reveals that the Spanish have experienced much more intercohort change (0.411) than individual change (0.155). For some reason, the religious
distance among adjacent cohorts was large in Spain, while individual religious switching
was not very important in this period. Interestingly, things were quite different in Poland,
where change within cohorts (0.231) contributed more to the total change than across
cohort change (0.131). In Poland, the level of church attendance of adjacent generations
was not as different as in Spain, and there was much more individual religious change than
generational renewal.
It is worth mentioning that in both countries the slopes for cross-cohort and individual components of change are both negative (Spain: b1 = 0.010 and b2 = 0.033;

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

92

International Sociology 28(1)

Poland, b1 = 0.014 and b2 = 0.009). In other words, during the post-transitional

periods in Spain and Poland population replacement reinforced individual change, and
vice versa. On the one hand, according to the same-sign slope rule (Firebaugh, 1997),
it means that overall change outpaced individual change, something which usually
produces a pervasive sensation of very fast religious change. On the other hand, the
fact that both coefficients are negative practically allows significant age effects in the
data for these periods to be discarded or at least to conclude that age effects are smaller
than cohort effects. Under the same-signs rule, when both slopes are negative age
effects should be smaller than cohort effects whenever aggregate change outpaces individual change.
Moreover, the fact that the aggregate level of religious practice has significantly
dwindled in both countries, despite the prima facie positive relationship between age and
religiosity, strongly suggests powerful cohort effects, at least in Spain. Careful intracohort data inspection (Figure 1) will be helpful here. In Spain, the lack of change in
religious practice within the several cohorts points to the fact that the fall in religious
practice has resulted mostly from cohort succession. The pattern is much more complex
in the Polish case where we already know that intra-cohort change outpaces inter-cohort
change. In any case, it should be noted that only Polish cohorts born in 19211930 and
in 19311940 have experienced increased church attendance during this 16-year period,
whereas none of the remaining cohorts analysed in this study (that is, Poles born between
1941 and 1980) has increased religious practice. This pattern can be indicative of period
effects in the Polish case.
90%
80%

SPAIN

POLAND

70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%

1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008

0%

1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996

10%

1911-1920

1921-1930

1931-1940

1941-1950

1951-1960

1961-1970

1971-1980

1981-1990

Figure 1. Percentage of practising Catholics in Spain (19801996) and Poland (19922008) by

birth cohort.
Source: CIS Data Base for Spain and Polish General Social Survey and ISSP 2003 for Poland (see text for
specific studies).

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

93

Requena and Stanek

Table 2. Log-odds from logistic regression on religious practice in Spain and Poland
(dependent variable: attending mass at least once a month).
Spain
Cohort (ref. Spain: 19111920; ref. Poland: 19211930)
19211930
0.33***
19311940
0.48***
19411950
1.14***
19511960
1.83***
19611970
2.15***
19711980
2.07***
19811990
Survey year Spain (ref. 1980)
1985
0.12
1992
0.11
1996
0.22**
Survey year Poland (ref. 1992)
1997
2003
2008
Women
1.05***
Educational level (ref. no education)
Primary/first grade of secondary
0.17
Second grade of secondary
0.27***
Tertiary
0.54***
Employment situation (ref. non-active)
Employed
0.30***
Unemployed
0.57***
Habitat (ref. under 10,000)
10,00150,000
0.50***
50,001100,000
0.74***
over 100,000
0.79***
N
Intercept
1.27***
Log likelihood
5150.555
Pseudo R
0.159

Poland
(0.101)
(0.101)
(0.104)
(0.109)
(0.117)
(0.144)

0.14
0.06
0.14
0.11
0.25*
0.56***

(0.068)
(0.071)
(0.071)

(0.055)

0.07
0.13
0.24**
0.71***

(0.095)
(0.085)
(0.098)

0.09
0.05
0.03

(0.059)
(0.094)

0.13
0.57***

(0.07)
(0.102)
(0.06)
9,005
(0.133)

0.62***
0.85***
1.02***
1.36***
31378.036
0.064

(0.129)
(0.127)
(0.127)
(0.133)
(0.136)
(0.161)

(0.081)
(0.096)
(0.093)
(0.060)

(0.204)
(0.105)
(0.087)

(0.075)
(0.112)

(0.103)
(0.074)
(0.158)
6,022
(0.198)

Standard errors in parentheses.

***p < .000; **p < .01; *p < .05.
Source: CIS Data Base for Spain and Polish General Social Survey and ISSP 2003 for Poland (see text for
specific studies).

Table 2 shows two logistic regression models which attempt to expand previous
analyses of the intra-cohort and inter-cohort change in Spain and Poland, adjusting for
factors which may have affected religious behaviour such as sex, educational level, size
of municipality and employment situation.6 In other words, we estimate how church

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

94

International Sociology 28(1)

attendance probabilities vary in relation to consecutive cohorts and periods while keeping other variables related to structural and individual characteristics constant. As
expected, log-odd coefficients estimated for Spain show a steady trend of decline in
religiosity across cohorts. Each Spanish generation born between 1921 and 1960 is
considerably less religious than the previous one. This observation confirms the results
of the bivariate analysis already presented in Figure 1 and of the decomposition analysis. On the other hand, our model shows no significant differences between the two
youngest Spanish cohorts, socialized during the political transition and immediately
afterwards (19611970 and 19711980), even though both are still considerably less
religious than those born in the 1950s and earlier. The coefficients estimated for survey
years show a relatively small additive period effect once the rest of factors are controlled. Specifically, between 1980 and 1992 the overall level of religious practice
remained steady and differences between each survey year are not statistically significant. In terms of period effects, the probability of church attendance only decreased, but
not very much, in the final years (19921996).
Consistent with the previous exercises results, the logistic regression model for
Poland displays a much more irregular pattern of religious practice when compared with
Spain (cf. with Figure 1). First, there are no considerable differences in religious attendance among cohorts born before 1971. Second, differences between coefficients indicate
that Poles born after 1970 are much less likely than older cohorts to attend mass on a
regular basis. Apart from this generational gap, our results also show that Poles born in
the 1980s are relatively less religious in comparison to the generation born in the previous decade. This may suggest that among Poles who have grown up in democracy each
new generation tends to be less involved in religion than the previous one. This trend can
be important to the extent that it may represent a potential secularizing force which could
cause a general religious decline in Polish society over the coming years. Finally, our
analysis also confirms that much of the change in religious practice is due to period
effects (intra-cohort change). The evolution of the log-odds of church attendance over
time reflects a successively decreasing trend. In addition, estimates show that periodrelated decline was especially intense between 2003 and 2008. To sum up, in the new
political context of post-transitional Poland two overlapping processes are taking place:
a negative period effect on religious participation, combined with a negative cohort
effect, which exclusively affects the religious involvement of post-communist cohorts.

Discussion
The objective of this article is to analyse the dynamics of religious change after the
recent democratic transitions in Spain and Poland under the following hypotheses: (1)
that the intense interaction between religion and politics has dominated religious change
in both countries and (2) that the democratization of their political systems has had different influences on the changing levels of religiosity in both societies. The comparison
between Spain and Poland is particularly interesting due to the fact that both countries
have a long and deeply rooted Catholic tradition and both have had authoritarian systems
imposed upon them during long periods of the second half of the 20th century (Casanova,
1994). However, the institutionalized religion has played very different roles in the

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

95

Requena and Stanek

recent histories of both countries. It is to be expected that these differing roles would
have produced equally differing processes of religious change that are driven by very
different generational dynamics in each case.
In order to empirically support our interpretation of religious change in these countries, we have analysed cohorts and attempted to specifically determine how much of the
religious transformation can be explained by change that simultaneously affects the
entire population (period effect) and how much depends on the succession of cohorts
socialized in authoritarian and post-authoritarian contexts (cohort effect). If the interpretation of religious change that we present in this work is correct, in the years following
the transition to democracy religious change should be more intense in Spain than in
Poland; the generational effects should have been greater than the period effects in Spain;
and the impact of population replacement should have been smaller than individual
change in Poland.
As we have been able to prove, since the dictatorship ended in Spain and the country
transitioned to a new political regime, the generational effect on religious change has
grown over time: the negative effects on levels of religious practice have been greater for
each successive generation. Our interpretation of the powerful generational dynamics of
religious change in this country is primarily based on the Catholic Churchs commitment
to the symbolic construction and political legitimization of the Franco dictatorship, as
well as on the negative effects that commitment has had on the religiosity of generations
that grew up during the final stages of the dictatorship and that opposed it and drove the
democratic transition. Note that the intensity of the distancing from the Catholic Church
is already quite noticeable in Spanish cohorts born between 1940 and 1950, that is, those
who were adolescents in the 1960s and who became adults in the 1970s. Not only were
these cohorts witnesses to but also protagonists of the intense social and economic modernization that in those years led to the final political decomposition of the Franco dictatorship. Three characteristics distinguish these cohorts: in their early youth they acquired
a very clear understanding of the Catholic Churchs support for the Franco regime, they
matured in a social and cultural context that was highly critical of the Churchs commitment to the dictatorship, and they saw the arrival of democracy at the start of their adult
life. This is why they noticeably distanced themselves from the institutional religion and
have very consistently maintained that distance throughout their adult lives. Without
exception, cohorts born in Spain after 1950 have followed the same pattern towards the
Catholic Church that had begun with the cohort born in the 1940s: maintaining the same
distance, lack of interest and a critical attitude to the Catholic Church, leading to decreasing aggregate levels of religious practice.
The results of our analysis show that in the Spanish case the generational dynamics of
religious change clearly and by a wide margin surpass individual dynamics during the
post-transition to democracy. Although period effects could have been important right
around the time of political transition (Requena and Stanek, 2012), once the democratic
regime was implemented and consolidated, on an individual level the Spanish have
barely changed the level of religious commitment they acquired before adulthood. This
is perfectly in line with the basic premise of the cohort analysis (Glenn, 2005; Mannheim,
1952; Ryder, 1965) which sees that the dissimilar socialization of cohorts born in different historical moments is decisive in creating the attitudes and behaviours that they will

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

96

International Sociology 28(1)

follow in their adult lives. In this regard, it must be emphasized that all cohorts born after
1950 have been socialized and grew up in a political context marked by a growing distance from institutional religion and in a sociocultural environment increasingly favourable to secularization, thanks to the advance of socioeconomic modernization and the
well-known opposition to the Catholic Church involved in some of these contemporary
processes of social change (Requena, 2008).
It is not surprising, therefore, that during the period analysed in this work the generational dynamics of intense religious change is more evident in the youngest cohorts
that is, among those who were born between 1961 and 1980. The world view of these
generations who grew up and matured in democracy is largely incompatible with the
doctrine of the Catholic Church, which has ultimately been unable to free itself from the
legacy of its political commitment to the Franco dictatorship. In addition, these powerful dynamics of religious change between generations have allowed Spain to quickly
join the general secularization trend characteristic of other European countries such as
France, the United Kingdom or the Netherlands and diminished the practice of
Catholicism in the country to unprecedented levels.
In accordance with our premises, the evolution of the religious phenomenon in
Poland after the democratic transition follows a very different pattern than in Spain.
As mentioned earlier, the establishment of the communist system in Poland converted
the Catholic Church into the institution most capable of integrating and mobilizing
large segments of society to oppose (passively and actively) the autocratic regime.
Moreover, in the increasingly confrontational climate that existed before the Polish
democratic transition, the communist regime saw the Church as the institution most
capable of stabilizing the explosive political and social situation in the country and,
therefore, it become the main political interlocutor and de facto representative of
society when dealing with the authorities (Eberts, 1998). In terms of our interpretation of the political and religious change, the unifying role of the institutional religion
in opposition to the communist regime created a specific context of socialization that
profoundly influenced broad sectors of the population. It is precisely this specific
socialization context, in which the Catholic Church embodied and concentrated the
political resistance to communism, which explains the absence of significant cohort
effects on religious change between generations who reached adulthood during the
communist period. In contrast to what occurred in Spain, the Polish generations
socialized under communism did not develop a political-ideological hostility towards
the institutional religion, but rather tied their hopes and aspirations for political liberation and change to Catholicism. In addition, the relative homogeneity of religious
behaviour and relatively high levels of religious practice in the cohorts socialized
during communism allow other characteristics of religious change in Poland to be
compared: the close tie between the Catholic Church and national identity and resistance to communism contributed to counteracting the negative effects of secularization on religious practice derived from the religious policy of the communist regime
and the structural changes associated with intense industrialization and urbanization
(Bruce, 2002; Varga, 1995).
However, the uniform religious behaviour of generations who shared the experience
of growing up and maturing in a communist context has been broken by those born in the

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

97

Requena and Stanek

1970s and 1980s, that is, the cohorts socialized during and after the collapse of communism in Poland. Our analysis has revealed important differences between the communist
and post-communist generations, with the former being significantly more religious.
Furthermore, this generation gap tends to become sharper with the succession of cohorts:
Poles born in the 1970s have significantly higher levels of religious practice than those
born in the following decade. Along these same lines, generational religious change has
been reinforced by a decrease in religious practice on the individual level after 2003. The
recent confluence of the cohort and period effects gives an idea of the extent of the
change in religious values, attitudes and behaviour that Polish society has experienced
since the fall of the communist regime.
More specifically, the social modernization and pluralism that have arisen after the
fall of communism in Poland have created a process of social differentiation in which the
Church has lost its social position as the main representative of society before political
power (Mariaski, 2003). At the same time, in the post-communist period liberal and
secularizing currents have arisen or been revived that demand greater limits on the real
and symbolic influence of the Catholic hierarchy. These currents are in conflict with the
Churchs attempts to maintain its political influence, an influence that causes discontent
in many sectors of public opinion (Burdziej, 2005; Mach, 2000). In addition, the involvement of the Church in public debate generates a new perception of this institution among
some sectors of Polish society. Church is increasingly being perceived as just one of the
many actors participating in the development of a vibrant new civil society in Poland.
Therefore, for younger generations of Poles the Catholic Church and its doctrinal
moral message have become just one of many lifestyle options to choose from (Szlendak,
2004). In summary, the gradual transformation of religious patterns due to cohort replacement and individual change reveals that the fall of the communism regime has also
entailed, perhaps ironically, the intensification of secularization in Poland.
Our findings confirm Martins secularization theory (1978), which claims that variation in patterns of religious change not only results from the divergent pace of urbanization, industrialization and expansion of scientific world view across Europe but also is
related to the role of the institutional religion in political conflict. In addition, the comparison between Spain and Poland confirmed that the process of secularization in traditionally Catholic countries presents uneven patterns depending on whether the society
suffers internal political conflict or faces an external threat. To conclude, our study
showed that the secularization process is a non-linear phenomenon that is often interrupted by parallel processes and events. Therefore, any analysis of historical changes in
religiousness should take into consideration the historical, political and sociocultural
particularities of each country.
Funding
Mikolaj Stanek would like acknowledge the support of research grant (25.102.462-M.481)
awarded by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research in 2011.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helping comments and suggestions on the original manuscript.

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

98

International Sociology 28(1)

Notes
1.

In 1989 quasi-democratic elections were held in Poland which allowed representatives of the
democratic opposition to join parliament. However, it was not until 1990 that the first fully
democratic presidential and local elections were held.
2. Studies carried out within the PGSS have always contained modules from the International
Survey Programme. Thus within both countries a great deal of equivalence between surveys
is guaranteed and the so-called house effects are reduced to a minimum.
3. This expression is deduced by simple arithmetic from the previous one:
(PCT/1 PCT) (PC1/1 PC1) = exp(b0 + b1YRT + b2CT) exp(b0 + b1YR1 + b2C1).
ln (PCT/1 PCT) ln (PC1/1 PC1) = (b0 + b1YRT + b2CT) (b0 + b1YR1 + b2C1).
ln [(PCT/1 PCT) / (PC1/1 PC1)] = b1YRT + b2CT + b1YR1 + b2C1.
ln [(PCT/1 PCT) / (PC1/1 PC1)] = b1(YRT YR1) + b2(CT C1).
4.

Effects of any of three mentioned variables can be logically expressed and explained in terms
of the other two: Cohort = Period Age.
5. In these models one year birth cohort has been recorded as a categorical variable. Now the
cohort variable distinguishes several categories indicating the decade of birth instead of year
of birth.
6. Due to the relatively small number of cases that could affect the coefficient reliability we
decided to withdraw cohorts born before 1911 in Spain and 1921 in Poland from this part of
analysis.

References
Berger P (1999) The desecularization of the world: A global overview. In: Berger P (ed.) The
Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Washington, DC:
Washington Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Berger P, Davie G and Fokas E (2008) Religious America, Secular Europe? A Theme and
Variation. Farnham: Asghate.
Box Z (2010) Espaa, ao cero. La construccin simblica del franquismo. Madrid: Alianza
Editorial.
Bruce S (1999) Modernisation, religious diversity and rational choice in Eastern Europe. Religion,
State and Society 27(3/4): 265275.
Bruce S (2002) God is Dead: Secularisation in the West. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bruce S (2011) Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Burdziej S (2005) Religion and politics: Religious values in the Polish public square since 1989.
Religion, State and Society 33(2): 165174.
Caplow T (1985) Contrasting trends in European and American religion. Sociological Analysis
46(2): 101108.
Casanova J (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Chaves M (1994) Secularization as declining religious authority. Social Forces 72(3): 749774.
Davie G (2000) Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Davie G (2007) Sociology of Religion. London: Sage.
De Graaf ND and Te Grotenhuis M (2008) Traditional Christian belief and belief in the supernatural: Diverging trends in the Netherlands between 1979 and 2005? Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion 47(4): 585598.
Dobbelaere K (2002) Secularization: An Analysis at Three Levels. Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang.

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

99

Requena and Stanek

Eberts MW (1998) The Roman Catholic Church and democracy in Poland. Europe-Asia Studies
50(5): 817842.
Filali-Ansary A (1996) Islam and liberal democracy: The challenge of the secularization. Journal
of Democracy 24(4): 7680.
Firebaugh G (1997) Analysing Repeated Surveys. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Firebaugh G and Harley B (1991) Trends in U.S. Church attendance: Secularization and revival, or
merely lifecycle effects? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30(4): 487500.
Glenn N (2005) Cohort Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hagenaars JA (1990) Categorical Longitudinal Data: Log-Linear Panel, Trend, and Cohort Data.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Halman L and Draulans V (2006) How secular is Europe? The British Journal of Sociology 57(2):
263288.
Kaufmann E, Goujon A and Skirbekk V (2012) The end of secularization in Europe?: A sociodemographic perspective. Sociology of Religion 73(1): 6991.
Linz J (1993) Religin y poltica en Espaa. In: Daz Salazar R and Giner S (eds) Religin y sociedad en Espaa. Madrid: CIS, pp. 150.
Lois D (2011) Church membership and church attendance across time: A trend analysis considering differences between East and West Germany. Comparative Population Studies Zeitschrift
fr Bevlkerungswissenschaft 36(1): 161192.
Mach Z (2000) The Roman Catholic Church in Poland and the dynamics of social identity in
Polish society. In: Inglis T, Mach Z and Mazanek R (eds) Religion and Politics: EastWest
Contrasts from Contemporary Europe. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, pp. 113128.
Mannheim K (1952) The problem of generations. In: Kecskemeti P (ed.) Essays on the Sociology
of Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 276322.
Mariaski J (2003) Koci katolicki a rozwj spoeczestwa obywatelskiego. Rocznik Lubuski
XXIX(I): 113134.
Mariaski J (2011) Katolicyzm Polski cigoc i zmiana. Studium socjologiczne. Krakw:
Wydawnictwo WAM.
Martin D (1978) A General Theory of Secularisation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Martin D (2011) The Future of Christianity: Reflections on Violence and Democracy, Religion and
Secularization. Farnham: Ashgate.
Mller O (2009) Religiosity in Central and Eastern Europe: Results from the PCE 2000 Survey
in comparison. In: Pickel G and Mller O (eds) Church and Religion in Contemporary
Europe: Results from Empirical and Comparative Research. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag fur
Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 6587.
Mller O (2011) Secularization, individualization, or (re)vitalization? The state and development
of churchliness and religiosity in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. Religion and
Society in Central and Eastern Europe 4(1): 2137.
Norris P and Inglehart R (2004) Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Prez-Agote A (2010) Religious change in Spain. Social Compass 57(2): 224234.
Prez-Agote A, Calvo F, Fernndez JM et al. (1993) Religin, poltica y sociedad en el Pas
Vasco. In: Daz Salazar R and Giner S (eds) Religin y sociedad en Espaa. Madrid: Centro
de Investigaciones Sociolgicas, pp. 243282.
Pickel G (2009) Secularization as a European fate? Results from the church and religion in
an enlarged Europe project 2006. In: Pickel G and Mller O (eds) Church and Religion in
Contemporary Europe: Results from Empirical and Comparative Research. Wiesbaden: VS
Verlag fur Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 89122.
Pickel G (2011) Contextual secularization: Theoretical thoughts and empirical implications.
Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 4(1): 320.

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

100

International Sociology 28(1)

Requena M (2005) The secularization of Spanish society: Change in religious practice. South
European Society and Politics 10(3): 369390.
Requena M (2008) Religin y sociedad: la secularizacin de la sociedad espaola. In: Gonzlez
JJ and Requena M (eds) Tres dcadas de cambio social en Espaa. Madrid: Alianza Editorial,
pp. 317343.
Requena M and Stanek M (2012) Impact of democratic transitions on religiosity in Spain and
Poland: A period effect analysis. Documentos de Trabajo del Grupo de Estudios Poblacin y
Sociedad IV(1), Madrid. Available at: www.geps.es.
Ryder NB (1965) The cohort as a concept in the study of social change. American Sociological
Review 30(6): 843861.
Sasaki M and Suzuki T (1987) Changes in religious commitment in the United States, Holland, and
Japan. American Journal of Sociology 92(5): 10551076.
Szlendak T (2004) Supermarketyzacja. Religia i obyczaje seksualne modziey w kulturze konsumpcyjnej. Wrocaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocawskiego.
Tilley JR (2003) Secularization and aging in Britain: Does family formation cause greater religiosity? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42(2): 269278.
Tomka M (2011) Expanding Religion: Religious Revival in Post-Communist Central and Eastern
Europe. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter.
Varga I (1995) Modernity or pseudo-modernity? Secularization or pseudo-secularization?
Reflections on East-Central Europe. In: Roberts RH (ed.) Religion and the Transformation of
Capitalism: Comparative Approaches. London: Routledge, pp. 231247.
Voas D (2009) The rise and fall of fuzzy fidelity in Europe. European Sociological Review 25(2):
155168.
Voas D (2010) Explaining change over time in religious involvement. In: Collins-Mayo S and
Dandelion P (eds) Religion and Youth. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 2532.
Voas D and Doebler S (2011) Secularization in Europe. Religious change between and within
Birth cohorts. Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 4(1): 3962.
Voicu M and Constantin A (2012) Religious revival in Romania: Between cohort replacement and
contextual changes. In: Pickel G and Sammet K (eds) Transformations of Religiosity: Religion
and Religiosity in Eastern Europe 19892010. Wiesbaden: Springer, pp. 101119.
Wallis R and Bruce S (1998) Secularization: The orthodox model. In: Bruce S (ed.) Religion and
Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 830.
Wohlrab-Sahr M (2011) Forced secularity? On the appropriation of repressive secularization.
Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe 4(1): 6377.
Wolf C (2008) How secularized is Germany? Cohort and comparative perspectives. Social
Compass 55(2): 111126.

Author biographies
Miguel Requena is Full Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Structure (Universidad
Nacional de Educacin a Distancia, Madrid, Spain) and member of the Population and Society
Research Group (GEPS). He has been Senior Associate Member at St Antonys College (Oxford
University) and Visiting Professor at Princeton University. His research interests are demography
and sociology of family, social stratification, religion and social change.
Mikolaj Stanek is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Economy, Geography and Demography
of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (Madrid, Spain) and a member of the Population
and Society Research Group (GEPS). His current research interests include the study of religious
changes in post-authoritarian countries, migrants labour market integration and international
mobility patterns of post-communist societies.
Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014

101

Requena and Stanek

Rsum

Lobjectif de cet article est de dterminer dans quelle mesure le processus de renouvellement gnrationnel a influ sur lvolution de la religiosit en Espagne et en Pologne dans la priode qui a
suivi leur transition dmocratique. Pour lEspagne, les donnes sont tires de plusieurs enqutes
ralises par le CIS (Centre espagnol de recherches sociologiques) entre 1980 et 1996. Pour la
Pologne, les donnes proviennent du Polish General Social Survey et de lISSP (International
Social Survey Programme) pour la priode 1992-2008. Les rsultats montrent deux modles radicalement diffrents en termes dvolution religieuse. Le recul de la pratique religieuse en Espagne
observ tout au long des 16 premires annes qui ont suivi la transition politique est principalement
attribuable au changement de cohorte qui concerne chaque nouvelle gnration ne aprs 1950.
Dans le cas de la Pologne, le changement qui a suivi la transition est moins marqu et principalement d un dclin de la pratique religieuse au niveau individuel. Ltude permet galement de
constater que les cohortes de Polonais ns pendant ou aprs la chute du rgime communiste sont
nettement moins religieuses que les cohortes plus anciennes.
Mots-cls: cohortes, Espagne, Pologne, religiosit, socits post-autoritaires

Resumen
El objetivo de este artculo es determinar en qu medida el reemplazo generacional ha influido en
la evolucin de la religiosidad en Espaa y Polonia en el periodo posterior a la transicin a la
democracia. Los datos para Espaa han sido extrados de varias encuestas llevadas a cabo por el
Centro de Investigaciones Sociolgicas (CIS) entre 1980 y 1996. Los datos para Polonia provienen
de la Encuesta Social General Polaca e ISSP que cubren el periodo 1992-2008. Los resultados
muestran dos pautas radicalmente distintas de cambio religioso. La cada en la prctica religiosa
observada en Espaa en los primeros 16 aos despus de la transicin poltica se debi principalmente al cambio entre cohortes que afecta a cada nueva generacin nacida despus de 1950. En el
caso de Polonia, el cambio en el periodo post-transicin es menos marcado y debido principalmente a la cada de la prctica religiosa a nivel individual. El estudio tambin muestra que las
cohortes de polacos nacidos durante y despus de la cada del comunismo son significativamente
menos religiosas que las cohortes ms mayores.
Palabras clave: cohortes, Espaa, Polonia, religiosidad, sociedades post-autoritarias

Downloaded from iss.sagepub.com by guest on August 26, 2014