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Religiosity, income and wellbeing in developing countries

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Abstract

This study examines the relationship between religiosity, income and subjective wellbeing in a sample of developing countries using data from the World Values Survey Waves 2–6 (1990–2014). Beyond examining the effects of religiosity and income on subjective wellbeing separately and independently, we also examine how the interaction between religiosity and income affects wellbeing. Our results suggest that while both religiosity and income positively affect wellbeing, the effect of income on wellbeing is relatively stronger (quantitatively larger in size) than the effects of religiosity. Furthermore, we find evidence in favour of complementarity between religiosity and income which show stronger effects on wellbeing than the individual effects of income and religiosity.

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Notes

  1. A vast body of literature examines the association between religiosity and wellbeing. Our attempt and claim is not to provide an exhaustive review of the extant literature; rather we provide a brief overview of selected empirics in order to identify gaps and motivate our study. For exhaustive reviews on the subject, see systematic reviews and meta-analyses such as Witter et al. (1985), Hackney and Sanders (2003), Sawatzky et al. (2005).

  2. The data are collected under ethical norms in line with the mission of the World Values Survey Association. Analysis of this secondary data represents low risk and is therefore exempt from additional ethics clearance at the authors home Institutions.

  3. The mode of data collection for WVS surveys is face-to-face interviewing.

  4. For details on the WVS data, see www.worldvaluessurvey.org.

  5. Our sample reflects about 36% of developing countries in the world. The sample also covers all the geographic locations in the world.

  6. Similar trends would be observed should we use columns 2 and 3. However, to avoid repetition, we focus on only column 1 only. In results not reported here, we also use income scale in the interaction term instead of the income dummy and results remain positive and statistically significant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    Sefa Awaworyi Churchill, Samuelson Appau & Lisa Farrell

Authors
  1. Sefa Awaworyi Churchill
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  2. Samuelson Appau
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  3. Lisa Farrell
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Correspondence to Sefa Awaworyi Churchill.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 10.

Table 10 Country rankings based on religion, income and wellbeing
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Awaworyi Churchill, S., Appau, S. & Farrell, L. Religiosity, income and wellbeing in developing countries. Empir Econ 56, 959–985 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-017-1380-9

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