text: True to a point, but it does not make his hypothesis less accurate.  That is what is called a confounding variable.  If it is the education - and I, for one, have long since thought that also, particularly the education of middle class white women, then the bigger causal factor is the education, not the bank accounts.  
  
  Is it affluence that makes people leave Christianity, particularly the RC?
  Is it poverty that keeps immigrants in the pews?
  Is it the education that affluence brings that contributes to loss of members?
  Is it lack of education that contributes to people staying?
  
  I would vote "education" when it comes to women, but none of us can know for sure without really good research that separates these variables as well as a number of others.