In 1949, post-war Germany decided to mandate religious education in public schools. Over 58,000 adults received this religious education for a total of about 1,000 hours — “about four times as much as for physics.”

But that started ending in different West German states beginning in the 1970s and continuing through the early 2000s. In those areas, students were given the option of taking those religious education classes or an alternative that focused on ethics from a secular perspective.

In a working paper by Benjamin W. Arold, Ludger Woessmann, and Larissa Zierow of Ludwigs-Maximilians University’s Center for Economic Studies and the ifo Institute, the researchers have found some stunning conclusions.

Students who took the secular ethics class were less religious as adults.
Students who took the secular ethics class were no less ethical than their counterparts in the religious education classes — at least when measured by volunteering hours or ethical attitudes.
There was an overall decrease in “<strong>conservative</strong> gender and family attitudes.”
There was a decrease in people thinking men were “better suited for certain professions” than women.
There was a decrease in the number of people who believed marriage was a requirement if a couple was cohabitating.
There was a small reduction among the secular ethics crowd in the percentage getting married (58.5% compared to 60%) and the number of kids they had (1.31 kids compared to 1.4 on average).
There was an increase in the labor market, with the secular ethics side working more hours per week, on average, and earning more.