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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

16. Why Are Some Societies More Religious Than Others?

Author : Jeanet Sinding Bentzen

Published in: Advances in the Economics of Religion

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The world of today sees vast differences in religiosity. The most religious countries are Algeria and Pakistan, where 100% of the population believe in God.

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previous chapter Religion and Conflict: A Quantitative Approach

next chapter Socioeconomic Inequality Across Religious Groups: Self-Selection or Religion-Induced Human Capital Accumulation? The Case of Egypt

According to the most recent waves of the pooled World Values Survey and European Values Study.

See Guiso et al. (2003), Scheve and Stasavage (2006), McCleary and Barro (2006), Gruber and Hungerman (2008), and Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott (2015) for empirical investigations or Iannaccone (1998), Lehrer (2004), and Kimball et al. (2009) for reviews.

The secularization hypothesis predicts that religiosity falls as societies modernize. It has received mixed support, though. Norris and Inglehart (2011) show that while religion has become less important in many Western countries, it has increased in importance in other parts of the world, leading to a net increase in the number of people with traditional religious views during the past 50 years. See also Stark and Finke (2000) and Iannaccone (1998) for discussions and Becker et al. (2017) for an empirical investigation of the influence of education on the secularization process.

The particular programming technology referred to here is ArcGIS programming, which makes it feasible to exploit the spatial dimension of the data better than ever.

For other evolutionary theories of the origins of religion, see Boyer (2008). Another theory is that major religions arose as a tool for power legitimization (e.g., Bentzen and Gokmen (2017) for an empirical investigation).

See reviews by Iannaccone (1998) and Iyer (2016).

Another supply-side-based story is that religious organizations create incentives to encourage stigmatizing behaviors in order to screen out potential free-riders. Iannaccone (1992) considers this.

Rather, religion seems to be on the rise in many societies, which some see as a rejection of the secularization hypothesis (e.g., Iannaccone 1998; Finke and Stark 2005; Norris and Inglehart 2011). Some scholars have viewed rising religiosity in the US as a counterexample of the secularization hypothesis. However, Voas and Chaves (2016) document that religiosity in the US has declined over the past decades when cohort effects are accounted for.

The religious denominations accounted for are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and others. Before aggregating the data, the two religiosity measures are regressed on religious denominations fixed effects. The residuals are saved, scaled between 0 and 1, and aggregated to the country level.

The global average of the Strength of Religiosity Scale across all waves 1981–2014 is 0.78, which covers 0.59 for Buddhists, 0.76 for Christians, 0.78 for Hindus, 0.87 for Muslims, and 0.80 for others. These differences are statistically different from one another.

Note that within-country analysis can be done without exploiting the subnational districts, if the analysis is restricted to information available in the pooled WVS-EVS. The subnational districts become particularly useful when the analysis involves linking the WVS-EVS data to data from other sources. See section “Testing One Theory: Religious Coping” for an application.

Calculated using analysis of variance, where the unit of analysis is individuals and the groups are countries.

The reasons for focusing on the demand-side are the following. First, the supply-side theories have not received strong support in the data. Second, the supply-side theories that have received support in the data (such as the theory based on secular competition) are most likely mainly suitable for development of religiosity in the US. This chapter explores global differences in religiosity. Third, the surveyed data allows for a test of the demand-side, not the supply-side. Last, when asked, the religious state that one of the main purposes of religion is to provide buffering against life stressors (see, e.g., Clark 1958 and Pargament 2001).

For example, Pargament (2001), Cohen and Wills (1985), Park et al. (1990), Williams et al. (1991). The terminology “religious coping” stems from psychology, but other labels have been used. For instance, religious buffering, the religious comfort hypothesis, and psychological social insurance.

See, for example, Ano and Vasconcelles (2005) and Pargament (2001) for reviews.

See also Feuerbach (1957), Freud (1927), and Marx (1867) for similar generalizations across all religions.

The data on earthquake risk measures the risk of getting hit by an earthquake of a certain size within the next 50 years. The data on earthquake events measures the exact location of actual earthquakes of various strengths. Larger earthquakes increase religiosity more. See more details in Bentzen (forthcoming).

Note, though, that increased religiosity after an earthquake could be due to other things unrelated to religious coping, which I will return to in section “The Mechanism”.

This means that the standardized parameter estimate on earthquake risk amounts to 70% of the standardized parameter estimate on a gender dummy. It is well known in the literature that women are more religious than men, for example, Miller and Hoffmann (1995).

The result is robust to adding country-by-year fixed effects, individual- and district-level controls, and rather comforting, future earthquakes have no impact on current levels of religiosity.

For instance, Miller et al. (2014), Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott (2015), Clark and Lelkes (2005), and Lehrer (2004). See also reviews by Smith et al. (2000) and Pargament (2001).

This analysis is based on the European Social Survey. The methodology used was coined the epidemiological approach by Fernandez (2011).

For example, Johnson and Spilka (1991) or review by Pargament (2001). Koenig et al. (1988) found that the most frequently mentioned coping strategies among 100 older adults dealing with 3 stressful events were faith in God, prayer, and gaining strength from God. Social church-related activities were less commonly noted. Similarly, a medical study by Miller et al. (2014) found that individuals for whom religion is more important experienced reduced depression risk (measured by cortical thickness), while frequency of church attendance was not associated with thickness of the cortices.

For example, Norris and Inglehart (2011), Sosis (2008), Park et al. (1990). See also Mattlin et al. (1990) on how practical everyday problems are less likely to trigger religious coping compared to large bad events. Skinner (1948) found that this reaction to unpredictability extends into the animal world. Pigeons subjected to an unpredictable feeding schedule were more likely to develop inexplicable behavior, compared to the birds not subject to unpredictability. Since Skinner’s pioneering work, various studies have documented how children and adults in analogous unpredictable experimental conditions quickly generate novel superstitious practices (e.g., Ono 1987).

The US Geological Survey (USGS) notes that earthquakes cannot be predicted (https://www2.usgs.gov/faq/categories/9830/3278). See also this post about our ability to forecast storms and their paths, as opposed to our inability to forecast earthquakes: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/risk-based-security-for-executives/risk-management/hurricanes-earthquakes-prediction-vs-forecasting-in-information-security/.

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Title: Why Are Some Societies More Religious Than Others?
Author: Jeanet Sinding Bentzen
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Advances in the Economics of Religion
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98847-4

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-98848-1

Copyright Year: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98848-1_16