Abstract
Amidst the process of globalization and the unsettling phenomenon of migration, diverse factors intersect and determine the socioeconomic situation in Italy. Besides the religious factor, the political, historical, geographical, ideological and illegal organizational factors (mafia, camorra, ‘ndrangheta, etc.) have shaped the north-south socioeconomic divide of Italy since its unification in 1861 and continue to do so after its configuration as a republic in 1946. Amidst such intricacies, the socioeconomic concern of Catholicism – the religious denomination of the majority in Italy – can be grasped from the local and universal Church documents and the initiatives of some lay associations and religious congregations. In this paper we explore empirically the impact of the religious profile of a sample of Italian secondary school students (N = 1087) on their attitudes towards socioeconomic rights. We examine the influence of variables related to personal and contextual religious attitudes, as well as that of some background variables such as personal profile, religious socialization and psychosocial traits. The analysis shows that although all students are in agreement with socioeconomic rights, Catholic churchgoers are found to differ significantly from Catholic non-churchgoers. Lesser agreement with social dominance and greater empathy emerge as strong predictors of favourableness to socioeconomic rights. Interestingly, young women are predictably more sensitive to socioeconomic rights than young men are. We discuss these and other significant findings.
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Notes
- 1.
For full text of the Documents of the Catholic Church referred to in this chapter, see: http://www.vatican.va/archive/index.htm
- 2.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/cescr.aspx (retrieved on 1 September 2018).
- 3.
“Churchgoers” are defined as those who claim to go to church ‘at least once a month’; “non-churchgoers” are those who claim to attend church services ‘a few times a year’, ‘hardly ever’ or ‘never’.
- 4.
Only in the case of authoritarianism measurement, principal component analysis was performed.
- 5.
In the cases of religious identity variable and region of residence, ‘eta’ coefficients were calculated.
- 6.
https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41688.htm (retrieved on 1 September 2018).
- 7.
https://www4.istat.it/en/files/2018/01/EN_Employed_unemployed_monthly201712_PressRelease.pdf (retrieved on 1 September 2018).
- 8.
https://www4.istat.it/en/files/2017/06/Italy_in_figures_16.pdf (retrieved on 1 September 2018).
- 9.
https://www4.istat.it/en/files/2017/06/Italy_in_figures_16.pdf (retrieved on 1 September 2018).
- 10.
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Anthony, FV., Zaccaria, F., Sterkens, C. (2020). Impact of Religion on Socioeconomic Rights: An Empirical Study of Italian Students’ Attitude. In: Ziebertz, HG. (eds) International Empirical Studies on Religion and Socioeconomic Human Rights. Religion and Human Rights, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30934-3_4
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