Poverty and impunity, relevant factors in variations in catholicism in Latin America

Abstract

In the last 25 years the Catholic population in Latin America has decreased considerably, some studies attribute the increasing secularization to the economic and social changes that marked the end of the 20th century. In this sense, this work aims to analyze the incidence of socioeconomic factors in the reduction of Catholic membership.

The methodology is based on econometric linear regression models.

The main results show that the catholicity index and economic growth are not related; but the growth of poverty did have a negative effect, particularly when analyzed by region. Finally, by combining violence and corruption, impunity emerges as a significant factor in the variation of Catholicism.