Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Epiphenom

Home
About

Home
Nonreligious
Income inequality drives church attendance

Income inequality drives church attendance

Last updated on: March 29, 2015 at 9:54 pm by Epiphenom

Income inequality drives church attendance 2015-03-29T21:54:37+01:00 Epiphenom

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Dutch press is reporting a new study with an international perspective on what drives church attendance (the authors are Stijn Ruiter, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, and Frank van Tubergen, a professor of sociology in Utrecht).

What they set out to do was to compare the major theories on what causes religion, using data from the World Values Survey and other sources. Broadly speaking, you can summarize these theories like this:

Religious regulation: a close relationship between state and church tends to turn people off it.
Education: better educated people abandon religion
Economic security: if people don’t have to worry about their future, gods lose their appeal.
Individualization: religion is a social phenomenon, and people are only religious because everyone around them is.

What Ruiter and van Tubergen did was a multi-level analysis. In other words, they looked at the characteristics of individuals and compared them with their churchgoing habits. And they also looked at the characteristics of nations, and looked to see what effect that had on individual churchgoing.

This multilevel analysis is a very powerful. But one downside is that it needs a lot of data, and the sort of data it needs aren’t available for a lot of countries. In fact, it’s mostly available only for rich, Christian countries. Still, they included 60 in their analysis, which is quite a pool.

By far and away the strongest predictor of how often a person goes to church is whether they had religious parents. That’s not too surprising. But what is surprising is that, even after controlling for that effect, one of the most powerful predictors is how religious everyone else’s parents are. In other words, one of the major deciding factors in whether or not you go to church is whether you grew up in a religious country.

Another important factor was religious regulation. In countries with a strong state interference in religion, attendance goes down. Other studies suggest that’s probably because when people feel pressured into going to Church, they don’t enjoy it.

One thing that didn’t have much effect was education. There was no clear effect of average education in a country. But there was a slight effect of individual education – more educated people are slightly less likely to be churchgoers. That’s probably because education is double-edged when it comes to religion. It decreases beliefs, but it also increases ‘community-mindedness’. In other words, educated people tend to get involved in community activities.

The final factor was income inequality. In line with other studies, they found that both income inequality and low state welfare spending are associated with more religion:

…we find that attendance rates are particularly high in countries with more socioeconomic inequalities and fewer social welfare expenditure. This effect equally applies to both poor and rich people, which is in line with the idea that because of economic mobility and the possibility of unemployment in the (nearby) future also the more affluent population feels more insecure in countries with more inequalities and without a well-developed social welfare system.

We also see that people with a lower income and who are unemployed attend religious meetings more often, and we find an enduring effect of growing up in times of war. In summary, the results of our study suggest that personal and societal insecurities play a crucial role in explaining cross-national variation in religious attendance.

Now this is particularly interesting because it backs up what I found in my own study, published earlier this year. In that study, I looked (in a rather simpler analysis) at the country-level factors that correlate with how often people pray. I found that income inequality was one of the strongest.

So the two studies complement each other. Religious attendance and religious belief are related, but they are not the same. At yet both these two key aspects of religion both decrease in countries with strong social systems where people have less to worry about.

But by now people have probably spotted the potential flaw, which is shared by all these kinds of correlational studies: correlation does not mean causation! So which is it? Does inequality really lead to more religion? Or could it be that religion causes inequality?

That’s a good question – and it’s a topic for the next post!

Hat tip: David Flint of Humanists4Science.

__________________________________________________________________________

Stijn Ruiter, & Frank van Tubergen (2009). Religious Attendance in Cross-National Perspective: A Multilevel Analysis of 60 Countries American Journal of Sociology (November)

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Causes of religion - social

Uncategorized

Inequality

Previous Post

November 3, 2009

Live long and be atheist

Next Post

November 10, 2009 Religion causes inequality (or is it the other way around?)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Causes of religion - evolution Causes of religion - psychological Causes of religion - social Demographics Digest Effects of religion - health Effects of religion - psychological Effects of religion - social Notifications Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What is the Christian practice of eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Jesus?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Communion Ordination Confirmation Baptism