RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION, INCOME STRATIFICATION, AND POLITICAL-PARTY PREFERENCE IN THE NETHERLANDS, 1964 TO 1992

Data from 1,098 independent, national Dutch surveys (N=814,912) are us ed to track trends in the impact of religious affiliation and income p osition on political party preference in the Netherlands from 1964 to 1992. The broad question is whether their efficacy declined over this 29-year period; the narrow issue is whether the declines paralleled ch anges in modernization. Multinomial logit analysis of the overall effe cts shows a marginal decrease for income but a massive fall for religi ous affiliation. The secular movement was not uniform across denominat ion, income group, and time, however. The most spectular decreases occ urred in the 1960s and 1970s, when the relatively minor gaps between l ow and high-income groups weakened and the once massive differentials between Catholics, Calvinists, and people with no religious affiliatio n faded. Many of the widespread shifts slowed down appreciably in the late 1970s and subsequently abated in the mid-1980s. These trends coin cided with macro-level socio-economic changes, and this finding lends credibility to the thesis that modernization contributed to deconfessi onalization and that income effects represent, in part, feedback to po litical interventions in the income distribution.