Religiosity, and how it affects smoking, drinking and drug use in Romania

While under communism the identity-providing religion was suppressed, religiosity is strong today even among the youth in post-communist countries. This provides an appropriate background to investigate how external and internal religiosity relates to risky behaviors like smoking, drinking, and drugs among the young. In a new study (Religiosity, Smoking and Other Risky Behaviors forthcoming OPEN ACCESS in the Journal of Economics, Management and Religion) using micro data for Romania I show in a joint paper with Monica Roman and Aurelian-Petru? Plopeanu that not religion as such or internal religiosity, but largely observable (external) religiosity prevents youngsters from wallowing in those vices. While this is found strongly for both males and females, those females doubting or reflecting religion show a somewhat smaller risky activity.??

While it has been established that religion associates negatively with risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and drug use, we study the role of religiosity, the intensive margin. Therefore, we focus on the two main facets of the multidimensional concept of religious behavior: external and internal religiosity, separated by intrinsic beliefs and external practices or experiences.

Internal religiosity or faith is defined as belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God’s will. External religiosity refers to all observable activities that are undertaken in a religious context, most conspicuously when going to church. Bruno Frey (2018)

Is it religious denominations, internal or external religiosity? With non-believers as the reference group, we aim at decomposing the behavioral contributions of the diverse facets of religiosity.

Post-communist Orthodox Romania is a natural case for such an analysis. After several decades of forced secularization under an oppressive communist regime with a powerful persecution of external religiosity almost until its extinction, Romanians again freely expressed their religiosity. Romania reported the highest level of church construction in Europe, a sign of revival of visible religiosity, the strongest among all Orthodox countries in the region. The young Romanians show a very high Orthodox affiliation and are found to be highly spiritual. Both types of religiosity play an essential role in Orthodoxy, being the core of a rich, sincere, and active religious life.

The transition induced substantial changes in young people's lifestyle and high pressures were also resulting in a strong rise of risky health behaviors including smoking, drinking, and drug misuse. The rise of both, religion and such behaviors, may be seen as a contradiction of the known negative relationship between religiosity and risky behavior. But it is in line with secularization theory suggesting a strong positive relationship between human insecurity and religiosity. While over longer periods across countries globally a rise in human (economic and physical) security through economic and societal development, education, urbanization, and social institutions has caused a decline in religiosity, this trend was weaker under communist regimes and in particular very strong among countries under Orthodox Christianity. This suggests that religiosity remained strong in Romania under communism and during transition, but its rising visibility during the transition was also supported by the then rising economic insecurity. This beneficial mechanism deals with what has been called the insurance effect of religion as a stress-absorbing buffer compensating adverse effects of life, now applied to the transition challenges. However, religion is not the only way to respond to human insecurity, risky behavior being an alternative: in economic terms, both are substitutes. So, we should expect to confirm that in the Romanian context.

Therefore, the purpose of our research has been to investigate how the facets of a strong religiosity have dealt with the challenges of transition in Romania, using smoking as an important indicator of risky behaviors. Smoking among Romanian youth reached alarming levels and raises concerns among public health authorities. The degree of smoking exposure was higher, especially among 15 year old male teenagers, while more than three quarters of the smokers started by the age of 18, and all by 26 years old. The Eurobarometer 2017, regarding the attitudes towards tobacco and electronic cigarettes, placed Romania as the 9th country in the European Union in terms of smoking prevalence among the population aged 15 and over. The Global Adult Tobacco Survey for Romania emphasized that 26,7% of the Romanian population aged 15+ were current smokers at that time, while 24.3% were daily ones (almost 4.5 million persons). Moreover, this study revealed that 17.1% of Romanian daily smokers aged 15+ started this daily vice until they were 15 years old, mainly in the case of those belonging to rural communities. A study conducted by the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) revealed that especially the male individuals aged 18 to 35 years from the rural areas indicated the episode related to the first smoking under 14 years of age, while the female ones from the urban regions started to smoke between 15 and 18 years old.

Increased participation in religious services or at least a regular church attendance has been considered a protective factor against tobacco use among high school students or other young adults. Complementary research among US adolescents found that external religiosity has a safety effect on previous bad habits only when internal religiosity is high enough or sufficiently internalized. While we focus in our research on the smoking-religiosity nexus studying the role of internal versus external religiosity, we also use data on other risky activities such as drinking and drug use for robustness checks.

We also suggests a new strategy to investigate the impact of religiosity: a cross-classification of young individuals by their responses to questions concerning their "believe in God" and "church attendance" allows identifying those with internal and external religiosity and to separate them from those doubting, reflecting or refusing religion. Faced with severe challenges of life those individuals with internal religiosity derive support and orientation only from their closeness and their belief in god. Those with external religiosity obtain strength also through their identification with and through the advise and moral support from the community of believers. Risky behaviors are not in line with religious rules and god's expectations. External religiosity makes such behavior more transparent to others who care or create additional misbehavior and guilt through attempts to hide behavior. Those who follow external religiosity value are to be seen and respected during and for their service for the belief. Misbehavior under internal religiosity has to be debated with god, who may be asked to forgive. The additional visibility to religious peers might be a more powerful monitoring force, and losing face much more painful for the soul. Our research consistently finds that external religiosity is behind the negative association with smoking and not religion per se. This understanding was confirmed when we studied drinking and drug openness as alternatives to smoking.

Interested in more details? Read: Monica Roman, Klaus F. Zimmermann and Aurelian-Petru? Plopeanu (2022), “Religiosity, Smoking and Other Risky Behaviors”. Forthcoming open access in?Journal of Economics, Management and Religion, Vol. 2 (2022).??Free access:?Pre-publication version