The Long Term Effects of School Prayer

This paper studies whether school prayer and Bible reading affect adult beliefs and behavior. We exploit the U.S. Supreme Court’s early-1960s school-prayer decisions, which removed these practices only from states where they were still legal. Linking this state-by-cohort variation to adult outcomes in the General Social Survey, we estimate the long-run effects of removing school prayer on religiosity, family formation, labor market outcomes, gender attitudes, and social views. The abolition of school prayer lowers adult religiosity; reduces marriage and fertility; increases employment; and shifts gender and selected social attitudes in a less traditional direction. The employment effect is driven by women, and may operate partly through decreased full-time homemaking and less traditional gender roles. A decomposition indicates that school prayer bans explain more than half the decline in American religious attendance, and roughly one quarter of the decline in fertility and rise in female labor force participation. The findings show that even brief daily devotional practices in childhood can shape adult beliefs, family life, and economic behavior.