The Cost of Being Muslim: National Variation in Religious Income Disparities

The labor market disadvantages of immigrants in Europe are well-established (e.g., Van Tubergen, Maas, and Flap 2004), but have been difficult to distinguish from those of religious affiliation.  Moreover, as immigrants settle and become citizens, religious differences in socioeconomic outcomes may become more salient than language and other differences in acculturation, suggesting discrimination. This paper considers the penalty for being Muslim, putting a “Euro value” on the residual disparity in incomes between Muslims and Christians after taking human capital, job characteristics, region and urban residence, family background and composition, spousal characteristics, language spoken at home, migrant status (generation), and ethnicity into account.  It also performs sensitivity analyses for levels of religiosity, feelings of religious discrimination, and interactions with gender and national background (including Muslim prevalence in origin country based on CIA 2007), and corrects for selectivity into paid employment and self-employment as well as controls for other effects on income.  With pooled data from the first six waves of the European Social Survey, this study goes beyond earlier studies in the Anglo-American countries (Siegel 1965; Model and Lin 2002; Heath and Martin 2012) to consider Muslim disadvantage in European countries with relatively large Muslim minorities. National effects at destination are examined with the population share of Muslims, employment protection legislation or flexible labor markets (Fleischmann and Dronkers 2008), and the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) of national guarantees of access to the labor market, secure residence status, ensure family reunion, enable political participation, encourage acquisition of nationality, and prohibit discrimination.