New study finds aging populations might counteract secularization

Is there an inexorable trend toward secularization in the West because younger generations are less likely to affiliate with organized religion? Or does long-standing evidence that people become more religious as they age indicate that secularization trends may reverse in rapidly aging societies of high-income countries?

In what they say is the first systematic attempt to analyze this issue, three Russian researchers found that in all cases, individuals were more likely to be significantly more religious as they age. The findings may have critical implications for rapidly aging societies in more affluent nations.

“It is mainly in the developed countries that global aging may have the most pronounced effect on slowing down the transition from religious to secular values or, possibly, even on some increase in religiosity,” the researchers said in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.