Each generation arrives more secular than the last

Share professing no religion, by birth-decade cohort, pooled across ESS rounds 1–11. Two regional averages (heavy lines) and five illustrative countries, from the secular Nordic and Atlantic publics to still-devout Poland and Ireland.

Western Europe Post-communist Europe secular: Sweden, UK, France devout: Poland, Ireland

Takeaway: across Western Europe the non-religious share roughly doubles from the 1920s cohort to the 1990s cohort, from 21.9 to 55.6 percent. Sweden was already three-quarters secular at the top; Poland and Ireland start near-universally religious and only begin to crack in the youngest cohorts.

Birth decade computed as round-fielding-year minus age, then binned by decade; cohorts with effective N below 100 are not plotted. Cohort comparisons partly conflate generation with survey period (the rounds are pooled). Western Europe, 19 countries; post-communist Europe, 18. Source: European Social Survey rounds 1–11, weighted by anweight.

The god gap in Western Europe: more pews, more right

Mean left–right self-placement (0 = Left, 10 = Right) by frequency of religious attendance, Western Europe pooled, ESS rounds 1–11.

Takeaway: the gradient is steady and one-directional. The never-attenders sit just left of center at 4.53; weekly attenders sit right of it at 5.39 — a 0.68-point god gap that builds rung by rung up the ladder of observance.

Western Europe, 19 countries, pooled across rounds 1–11; weighted. Effective N per attendance level ranges from about 580 (every day) to 47,900 (never). The two most-frequent categories are sparse and noisier. Source: European Social Survey, weighted.

Where religion still sorts politics — and where it has gone quiet

Within-country correlation between religious attendance and left–right self-placement, ESS rounds 1–11, sorted strongest to weakest and colored by region. Positive = the observant lean right.

Catholic / Southern Europe Nordic / other Western post-communist other (IL, TR)

Takeaway: the religious–right link is strongest in Catholic and Southern publics — Slovenia (+0.357), Spain (+0.279), Poland (+0.267) — and fades toward zero in the secular post-communist publics, where it can even turn negative: Czechia (−0.028) and Estonia (−0.016) sit on the wrong side of the line.

Weighted Pearson correlation of attend_freq (1 = never … 7 = every day) with lr_scale (0 = Left … 10 = Right), computed within each country across pooled rounds; cells with effective N below 300 are suppressed. 39 countries shown; Israel and Turkey (flagged “other”) are excluded from the regional pools. Source: European Social Survey rounds 1–11, weighted.