ABSTRACT
The Catholic population at the present includes converts and excludes defectors. If one wants to measure the effects of a Catholic upbringing on human behavior, using Catholic when individuals are surveyed rather than Catholic upbringing can result in serious biases because defectors and converts may have preferences that are different from other Catholics. Selection bias is also an important issue in measuring the effects of Catholic schooling. A Catholic upbringing has resulted in Catholic women marrying for the first time at a relatively late age. However, the Catholic effect on women’s age at first marriage has declined over time. If one compares the divorce rate for White Catholics with White non-Catholics, the rate for Catholics overall is only four percentage points lower than the rate for non-Catholics. Catholics have acquired slightly more schooling than non-Catholics. Catholic men earn substantially more than Baptist men and less than other Protestant men.
