Intergenerational Transmission of Religiosity and Socail Values over Historical Time

This paper examines variation in the strength with which religiosity and social values are transmitted across family generations as a function of historical time, cohort membership, and age, as well as change in family structure. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations, we examine more than 3,000 intergenerational dyads consisting of parents and children surveyed betwwen 1971 and 2016 to discover whether rates of transmission have declined across time and between three cohorts of generational pairs. An important explanatory variable is whether parent-child relationships are biological or step. Religiosity is measured in terms of beliefs, attendance, and denomination. Social values are measured as those representing individualism and collectivism. Multilevel models are used to predict variation in parent-child correlations based on time varying metrics, and differences between cohort pairings and bio-step type of relationship. The analysis expands our understanding of whether intergenerational continuity in fundamental value systems has weakened, and offers possible explanations for this trend.