Measuring Religious Diversity in the Province of Laguna, Philippines, 2000: An Application of the Lieberson Methodology

Filipinos are homogeneously Christian in terms of religion and such generalization will be examined further or will be challenged by doing a spatial analysis. This paper focuses in studying the province of Laguna, which had a total population of 1,965,872 in 2000. The study examines quantitatively patterns of religious diversity in the population of the province. Specifically, it will classify religious groups in the Philippines from the spatial aggregation of Philippine Census of Population and Housing 2000 data. The diversity in religion and diversity in religion by ethnicity were measured by applying the Lieberson methodology of measuring population diversity within (Aw) and population diversity between (Ab) populations in the 30 municipalities of Laguna. Results show that only three municipalities, Santa Cruz (0.2495), Luisiana (0.2434), and Pagsanjan (0.2133) record high diversity indices within municipalities compared to the other twenty-seven municipalities. Same results yield from computing the diversity indices between municipalities. Even controlling for the ethnicity, the religious diversity do not change. Whether Tagalog (0.2364) or Non-Tagalog (0.2668), the probability of selecting a pair having a different religion is low. Overall, the religious diversity of the Lagunese does not exhibit heterogeneity.