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Economics and Religion: Post 1
How does religion impact those that follow it?
A good starting point is to consider the impact of religiosity on an outcome like happiness. There are dozens of studies that provide correlational evidence on this topic.
How does religion impact those that follow it?
A good starting point is to consider the impact of religiosity on an outcome like happiness. There are dozens of studies that provide correlational evidence on this topic.
A highly-cited example is a 2010 PNAS article by Kahneman and Deaton. They analyze data from a large sample (~450,000) of US survey takers to see what correlates with various measures of subjective well being.
They find that being religious significantly and positively correlates with happiness ratings. The effects are large, although not as large as the negative effects of being alone or in poor health.
One issue with measuring the correlation between religiosity and happiness is that it is unclear what controls should be included. For example, the Kahneman and Deaton analysis described above shows the impact of being religious after controlling for being alone.
One could argue that the primary mechanism of how religiosity might lead to happiness is through social connections. So, these large multivariable regression approaches are a bit tricky to interpret - even when simply trying to establish a correlation.
That being said, it ends up no matter how you run the analysis or what you control for, a strong correlation is typically found. For example, consider this analysis from Pew Research with no controls:
36% of Americans that are actively religious say they are "very happy" compared to just 25% of Americans who are not religious. This same correlation shows up in most of the 25 other countries that are shown in the above figure that were surveyed by Pew.
After reviewing the evidence, I am convinced that there is a large and robust positive correlation between religiosity and self-reported happiness in the US and many if not most other countries. This relationship holds up to many different ways of analyzing the data.
Of course, the million dollar question is whether this relationship is just a correlation or if it is causal. I& #39;ll dive into the literature that attempts to identify causal estimates next!
