Talk:Religion in Austria

Source for table

Could someone provide a source for the table "Austrian Roman Catholic church Figures (2005)". Thanks. Gugganij (talk) 21:35, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Catholic opposition to civil unions

Regarding these two (1 · 2) edits of mine, allow me to explicate: What is needed are not just sources saying that

1. The Catholic church opposes civil unions
2. The majority of Austrians are nominally Catholic
3. Civil unions were enacted in Austria in 2010

Because bringing those statements together would be a novel synthesis. There needs to be a reliable source explicitly discussing the connection between these three statements in the context of religion in Austria. Gabbe (talk) 05:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

data vandalism

somebody started to change many data without proper sources. I do not know how to set back to last July version, please support me, thanks Nillurcheier (talk) 20:12, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed Yes, Nillurcheier, I've noted that there have been WP:UNDUE changes and unsourced changes to statistics over the last couple of months. I've reverted to a stable version from the beginning of July. Cheers! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:46, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Confirmed as correct. Thanks, Cyberbot II. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:42, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

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Confirmed as correct, but only dated capture exists. Replaced with current url. Thanks, Cyberbot II. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:55, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

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Wrong capture. Replaced with active link to article. Thanks, Cyberbot II. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:40, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Estimates of the Vienna Institute of Demography

Copied from my talk page. JimRenge (talk) 23:37, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I would know the motivation of your doubts regarding the estimates. Even if there is the year 2046 in the title of the publication, the 2016 estimates are more reliable because there are more data to take in consideration. The second part of the publication is completely written in English and it explains in the minimal details the methodology and the scope. At page 27, you can clearly read that the first aim of the research is to estimate the religious composition of Austria and Vienna in 2016, taking into account multiple factors widely explained from page 39, chiefly secularization, immigration, the fertility and the religious conversions. In conclusion, these are the most accurate estimates (I think also better than the Wiener Zeitung's estimates) that come from serious sources, they shouldn't be deleted, I would seek consensus, thank you.--FrankCesco26 (talk) 19:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

FrankCesco26, thank you for starting the discussion. You wrote "the 2016 population has been reconstructed by applying projection techniques and using the information collected in the 2001 census as basis, and taking into account components of population change, namely migration, fertility, mortality, and religious mobility beetween 2001 and 2015." Their method uses many error-prone assumptions and the census data is 15 years old. My main concern is that their results do not match the membership data of the catholic and protestant churches (see table in "Statistics" section) which should be accurate. However, this is just my opinion, it might be a good idea to ask more editors what they think about this. JimRenge (talk) 23:37, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Austria impose, like Germany, a tax of the 1% of the total income to the members of Catholic Church, Lutheran and Reformed Churches, so people affiliated with these Churches are more willing to leave their church to avoid paying these taxes. The formal church membership is also 15 years old, in fact these Churches count the baptisms, the deaths and who enters and leaves, and these numbers are calculated each year from the 2001 Census data. This could be incorrect also for the migrant population, I think that many migrants who identify in a Church and live in Austria aren't properly counted. Comparing the formal affiliation data with data from many minor surveys, none of them shows a data less than 60%. The estimate of Vienna Institute of Demography is very similar to the 2015 Eurobarometer's one (66.5% and 64.2%). Then, there are the Wiener Zeitung's estimations whose source is dubious. So, I don't think that these estimates should be removed from the Austria article.--FrankCesco26 (talk) 11:36, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know, the yearly church membership data (2017 soon to come) are not linked to the 2001 census but the real membership lists of the catholic church (and other churches) including migrants, as long as they are legally registered. The only plausible idea, to explain the difference of about 5% (catholic) between church data an the Vienna Institue data is to asume a speculation of the authors about believers, who aren't members. Might be, but how to find out? Is there a link to the full report, I like to check the method, which is unfortunately not described in the linked short version. --Nillurcheier (talk) 16:49, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

This study can be found here: https://www.integrationsfonds.at/fileadmin/content/AT/Fotos/Publikationen/Forschungsbericht/Forschungsbericht__Demographie_und_Religion.pdf. It is indeed merely an estimation based on 2001 census data. In any case what is relevant are the official numbers kept by the institutions, which are based on actual counting. The estimate of the study can be seen to be quite inaccurate compared to the official numbers by the churches.--Mangostaniko (talk) 23:26, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

The page where I've found it is this: https://www.integrationsfonds.at/publikationen/forschungsberichte/forschungsbericht-demographie-und-religion/, the part in English is bigger and has a wide explanation of the methodology. I think that the only way to see the gap is actually comparing the 2001 Church data and the figures from the adjusted 2001 census figures, if possible. Regarding the formal affiliation data, yes it's based on actual counting but it's actually underestimated of at least 5% mainly for the reason to avoid paying the tax. Comparing several sources, with the lowest being ESS 2016 (63.3% one question asks if religious, the other asks wich denom.), Vienna Institute 2016 (64.2) and EB (66.5), and the higher being the ISSP 2015 (71.2) and Pew Research Center 2017 (72.4), no one is less than 60%, so there is a gap.--FrankCesco26 (talk) 09:20, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

One further link I've found from the site of the Oesterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften:

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/vid/research/research-groups/human-capital-data-lab/and-religion/ --FrankCesco26 (talk) 12:26, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

I am against the insertion of such Vienna Institute data, or any other unofficial estimate. An estimated projection based on 2001 data is by no means a survey of the actual population. And the fact that official church membership data is underestimated due to the church tax is your own speculation.--Wddan (talk) 16:09, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Wddan, it should be counted numbers here, not estimates based on 16 year old numbers.--Mangostaniko (talk) 17:32, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Wddan's reasoning makes no sense; we must not invent the unreliability of a source just because it is not an estimate of the church or a survey. The estimate comes from a cohesive and reliable source, which is based on scientific methods. The source is based on census data because they are the only reliable ones, and starting from those it reconstructs the current composition taking into consideration multiple factors such as migration, secularization, conversions, and population aging. This means that the source isn't old.--FrankCesco26 (talk) 19:06, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

The catholic church had a certain number of members in 2001. Since then, every single person who left the church, can only do that by contacting the church itself. Thus the church has accounted for all the people since 2001. Moreover, i would argue that the church has no interest to present lower numbers. Church membership in Austria is quite a formal thing, people also pay a compulsory fee to the church. For this reason alone, the church keeps very detailled records. To be clear, while it should not be the primary source, it is perfectly ok to also have the estimate study here, however it must be clearly described for what it is: an estimate, not actual count of members.--Mangostaniko (talk) 19:29, 17 December 2017 (UTC)