The Gruber-Hungerman paper - titled "The Church vs. the Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?" - finds that after blue laws are repealed by a state:

? Religious attendance drops about 5 percent overall on average.

? About 15 percent of those who had been attending religious services weekly no longer attend so regularly.

"Individuals are not dropping out of churchgoing altogether, but rather ... they are simply going less frequently," the authors write.

? Religious contributions decline 13 percent, or about $109 per person per year. Spending by religious institutions falls by about 6.3 percent.

? Drinking rates by youths go up. Before repeal, about 40 percent of nonreligious youths (those in their late teens and 20s) reported having had six or more drinks at one sitting sometime in the past month. About 30 percent of youths defined as "religious" because of their church attendance reported such episodes of heavy drinking.

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Posted at 10:46 AM in Family by J. Lawrence Scholer [?] | Permalink

In virtually every known human society, the institution of marriage has served and continues to serve three important public purposes. First, marriage is the institution through which societies seek to organize the bearing and rearing of children; it is particularly important in ensuring that children have the love and support of their father. Second, marriage provides direction, order, and stability to adult sexual unions and to their economic, social, and biological consequences. Third, marriage civilizes men, furnishing them with a sense of purpose, norms, and social status that orient their lives away from vice and toward virtue.

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Posted at 1:27 PM in Family by Nathaniel Ward [?] | Permalink

Americans are eating at home more--but it's somebody else's food.

At Outback, the convenience of curbside service has helped bolster takeout sales from $104 million in 2000 to $274 million in 2005, or 11 percent of the chain's total United States revenue. These days, virtually no one comes inside the restaurant to pick up a takeout order, Mr. Novello said.

"We saw the old system as a hassle," he said. "Find a parking space, then, in many cases, getting the kids out of the car with you, coming inside, then putting the kids back in the car. This is much easier."

Now, restaurant employees field cellphone calls from customers and monitor the designated curbside parking spots through a video camera. When cars pull up, employees match the car model and color to the order, dash out with the food and then hurry back inside to run a credit card or make change.

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Posted at 9:42 AM in Family by J. Lawrence Scholer [?] | Permalink

Parenting was always hard work, of course. But aside from the economic payoffs, parents used to get a lot of social benefits, too. Yet in recent decades, a collection of parenting "experts" and safety-fascist types have extinguished some of the benefits while raising the costs, to the point where what's amazing isn't that people are having fewer kids, but that people are having kids at all.

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Posted at 3:22 PM in Family by Bridgett Wagner [?] | Permalink

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