Another set of explanatory variables included in Table 2 measures the
composition of the population by major religion in 1980. The present analysis uses an eight-way breakdown: Catholic, eastern religions (including Buddhist), Hindu, Jewish,
Muslim, Orthodox, Protestant, and other religions.
In each case, the variable refers to
the fraction adhering to the specified religion among persons who expressed adherence to
some religion.
The specification omits the Catholic fraction as a normalization. Hence,
each coefficient should be interpreted as the effect from the indicated religion relative to
that for Catholic.