The Changing Landscape of Religious Affiliation in Brazil 1970-2010: Age, Period and Cohort Perspectives

Raquel Coutinho, Cedeplar, UFMG and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
André B. Golgher, Cedeplar, UFMG

Brazil has experienced enormous religious changes in the past half century, primarily characterized by a sudden drop in the number of Catholics along with a major increase in the proportion of Protestants and people without any religious affiliation. The exact nature of these changes, however, is poorly understood from a demographic and sociological perspective. This paper examines changes in the proportion of religious affiliation (Mainline Protestants, Pentecostals, Neo-pentecostals, Catholics, and those without religion) across different birth cohorts that we built using individual-level data from several decennial Censuses of Brazil (1970-2010). Drawing on Hierarchical Age-Period-Cohort (HAPC) and Cross-Classified Random Effects models (CCREM), we examine the extent to which age, period, and cohort processes characterize religious changes in Brazilian society controlling for sex, education, level of urbanity, and geographic area.