Introduction

Religion is an important aspect of life in the United States. According to a large-scale survey conducted in 2001, 75 percent of adults consider themselves to be religious or somewhat religious, 91 percent report that they believe in God, and 54 percent live in households where either they themselves or someone else belongs to a religious congregation or house of worship (Kosmin and Keysar 2006). This book is a compilation of some of the articles I have written over the past 15 years on the role that religion plays in various dimensions of the economic and demographic behavior of American individuals and families, including education, cohabitation, marriage, divorce, fertility, and female employment. My objective in each of these studies was to expand our understanding of mechanisms through which religion may affect behavior and to quantify the underlying relationships.