The influence of Lent on marriages and conceptions explored through a new methodology

Abstract

Herteliu et al. (2015) have elsewhere analyzed the impact of religious festivals on births in Romania. Here we broaden the analysis (i) by studying the effect of Lent on marriages as well as births (ii) by analyzing a number of other countries which allows a comparison with non-Orthodox countries. We also introduce a new methodology which treats the data in a way that frees the analysis from bias related to seasonal patterns of births and marriages. The comparison between the effects on marriages and conceptions appears of particular interest for it permits to assess the respective weighs of social pressure on one hand and personal leanings on the other hand. Our analysis reveals a strong effect of Lent on marriages with a reduction by 80% in Orthodox countries and 40% in West European Catholic and Protestant countries. Since the influence of Lent on conceptions is independent of any form of direct social control one might expect the effect to be much smaller. In percentage terms it is roughly 10 times smaller than the effect on marriage. The present methodology opens the way to the accurate investigation of the impact of other mobile religious periods (e.g. Ramadan) on various social phenomena (e.g. suicide).