1. gnxp
  2. Hispanics more religious, not that zealous

Hispanics more religious, not that zealous

By razib on August 30, 2009.

A few months ago I pointed out that minorities don't oppose gay marriage, blacks do. Specifically, there are sometimes assumptions that Hispanics are extremely religious Roman Catholics characterized by very socially conservative views. From what I have seen the data are of much more modest magnitude than what characterizations would suggest, but I thought it would be useful to put some numbers from the General Social Survey up. The years are from 2000-2008, when the "Hispanic" variable was being collected. First I separated into three categories, Non-Hispanics who were not black, which was a 95% white and 5% Asian sample. Then Hispanics (who were 1/3 white and 2/3 "Other") and finally, blacks. Second, I decided to look at Non-Hispanic vs. Hispanic Roman Catholics. In this sample of Hispanics 2/3 were Roman Catholics.

All



Non-Hispanic - 95% White, 5% Asian Hispanic Black
No Religion 16.1 11.7 10.6
Know God Exists 57.7 72.6 83.6
Bible Word of God 27.9 40.2 56.4
Inspired Word 51.9 44.4 33.4
Book of Fables 18.3 13.5 8.6
Human Beings Developed From Animals 53.5 48.7 33.8
Approve Banning School Sanctioned Prayer From Bible 43.7 42.8 22.2
Never Attend Church 21.5 17.7 12.7
Every Week 17.9 17.9 21.1
More than Once A week 7 5.4 12.9
Definitely Believe in Hell 49.6 52.4 66.5
Yes – Abortion on Demand 41.6 30 37
Homosexual Sex Always Wrong 53 58 74.5




Catholics Only






Know God Exists 59.4 74
Bible Word of God 15.8 37.4
Inspired Word 70.3 49.8
Book of Fables 12.8 11.5
Human Beings Developed From Animals 65.5 57.1
Approve Banning School Sanctioned Prayer From Bible 41.9 40.3
Never Attend Church 11.9 11.9
Every Week 26.9 19.3
More than Once A week 3.5 2.4
Definitely Believe in Hell 45.3 47.7
Yes – Abortion on Demand 37 27.1
Homosexual Sex Always Wrong 48.6 58.4

Hispanics are somewhat more religious than the median American, but the data are spotty in arguing for a strong distinction. The main issue where a noticeable difference crops up is on the question of abortion, which is probably a cultural issue since many Hispanics and/or their families are of recent origin from nations where abortion is illegal.

Tags
Culture
Hispanics
religion

More like this

Region & race; opinions & values
In the post below I combined some of the Census Regions for reasons of sample size. But I decided to do this again without combining, but removing some of the questions because of small sample sizes. Again, I also limited the sample to whites between 1998-2008. But, I added another category:…
Regional differences in opinion, attitude and values
Update: Follow up post. This Michael Lind piece bemoaning liberal contempt for white Southerners made me want to look a bit deeper and compare interregional differences and similarities. I went into the General Social Survey and limited responses to whites only and compared by region. The regions…
Revenge of the roader: Chinese atheists are reactionary
One of the major problems in most societies, subject to "great sorts" of various kinds, is the fact that people observe correlations of attitudes & beliefs, and infer from those necessary relations. For example, if one of the first things that someone finds out about me is that I am an atheist…
Conservatives Democrats vs. Liberal Republicans, etc.
Question below about the details of what conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans might believe, etc. I decided to look for a few questions. I removed Independents because their sample sizes are a bit smaller. I clustered all those with socioeconomic status 17-47 as "Low" and those from 47-98…