Does Religion Affect Economic Growth and Happiness? Evidence from Ramadan *

Abstract

We study the economic effects of religious practices in the context of the observance of Ramadan fasting, one of the central tenets of Islam. To establish causality, we exploit variation in the length of daily fasting due to the interaction between the rotating Islamic calendar and a country’s latitude. We report two key, quantitatively meaningful results: (i) longer Ramadan fasting has a negative effect on output growth in Muslim countries, and (ii) it increases subjective well-being among Muslims. We find evidence that these patterns are consistent with a standard club good explanation for the emergence of costly religious practices: increased strictness of fasting screens out the less committed members, while the more committed respond with an increase in their relative levels of participation. Together, our results underscore that religious practices can affect individual behavior and beliefs in ways that have negative implications for economic performance, but that nevertheless increase subjective well-being among followers.

Communism as the unhappy coming

“…Our results also relate to a growing scholarship studying how differences in religion and religiosity affect culture (Bénabou et al 2015;Guiso et al 2003;La Porta et al 1997). Finally, we enrich a broader literature on the link between religion and various economic outcomes including growth (Barro and McCleary 2003;Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott 2015;Cantoni 2014), human capital (Becker and Woessmann 2009), investor protection (Stulz and Williamson 2003) and work ethic (Spenkuch 2011). This paper is organized as follows.…”

“…Following the pioneering work of Weber (1904), scholars have examined the link between religion and happiness (Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott 2015;Djankov et al 2016); attitudes toward market economy, work ethic and thrift (Guiso et al 2003;McCleary and Barro 2006); trust (La Porta et al 1997); and women and members of other religions (Clingingsmith et al 2009). A broader literature studies the impact of long-run historical factors on cultural preferences (Becker et al 2014;Nunn and Wantchekon 2011).…”

Temporal variations of fine and coarse particulate matter sources in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

“…For the traffic factor, the highest levels were observed during spring, and the lowest levels were observed in summer, possibly due to decreased travel during hotter temperatures and/or to poorer dispersions, and consistent with past findings observing decreased VOCs (Alghamdi et al, 2014a;) and NO x (Alghamdi et al, 2014b) concentration levels, which are indicative of traffic volume, during summers in Jeddah. The decreased mass estimates for the anthropogenic source categories during summer may also reflect reduced human activity during Ramadan (July 31 st to August 30 th in 2011), occurrence of which is associated with regional decreases in traffic, industrial activity, and commercial output (Campante and Yanagzawa-Drott, 2015). This potential hypothesis is additionally supported by substantially lower EFs (Table 5) observed during the summer for the highly enriched PM elements.…”

Kualitas Perairan pada Bulan Ramadan di Situ Gintung, Tangerang Selatan, Banten

“…Bulan Ramadan di negara yang mayoritas muslim, akan mempengaruhi aktivitas dan perilaku sosial masyarakat di periode sebelum, saat dan setelah Ramadan seperti Indonesia dan Malaysia (Ra, 2016). Perubahan aktivitas dan perilaku sosial bulan Ramadan seperti pendidikan (Oosterbeek & Van der Klaauw, 2013), aktivitas fisik (Geok et al, 2013), ekonomi (Campante & Yanagizawa-Drott, 2015) dan konsumsi (Ra, 2016). Selain itu, pada saat Ramadan menyebabkan volume sampah meningkat (Wardiha et al, 2014), sehingga mengindikasikan terjadi peningkatan limbah yang masuk secara langsung atau tidak langsung, ke lingkungan seperti danau.…”