Does Religiosity Promote or Discourage Social Trust? Evidence from Cross-Country and Cross-State Comparisons

Abstract

Abstract:We look at the effect of religiosity on social trust, defined as the share of a population that thinks that people in general can be trusted. This is important since social trust is related to many desired outcomes, such as growth, education, democratic stability and subjective well-being. The effect of religiosity is theoretically unclear: while all major religions call for behaving well to others, religious groups may primarily trust people in their own groups and distrust others, as well as cause division in the broader population. We make use of new data from the Gallup World Poll for 105 countries and the U.S. states, measuring religiosity by the share of the population that answers yes to the question "Is religion an important part of your daily life?". Our empirical results, making use of regression analysis whereby we control for other possible determinants of social trust and, by using instrumental variables, for the risk of reverse causality, indicate a robust, negative effect of religiosity, both internationally and within the US. When interacting religiosity with the degree of religious fractionalization, we find that the negative effect occurs above a rather low threshold level of fractionalization, where it increases monotonically, in line with our theoretical prediction.

The contextual‐level effects of social trust on health in transitional countries: Instrumental variable analysis of 26 countries

“…8,37 On the other hand, religious fractionalization has a negative impact on trust due to the lack of trust between people who belong to different religious denominations. 38,39 In both cases, a significant correlation between the extent of religious fractionalization and contextual-level trust can be expected. For each country, we captured religious fractionalization by constructing an index that denotes the likelihood of 2 randomly selected…”

Societal Trust and Geography

“…2SLS (Two-Stage Least Squares) analysis may also be attempted, but this depends on the availability of appropriate instrumental variables. Acemoglu et al (2002) used settler mortality as a proxy for good institutions, in a regression of institutions on economic growth; Berggren and Bjørnskov (2009) used log GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as an instrumental variable for a regression of religiosity on trust. From a theoretical perspective, both of these instruments are potentially problematic, because, as mentioned earlier, disease may have multiple pathways affecting economic growth, other than through settler mortality and institutional development; and GDP may be endogenously affected by trust, similar to the reasoning behind the theory of social capital (ex Arrow, 1972; Fukuyama, 1996, Putnam, 2000).…”

“…The aforementioned factors (disease burden, income inequality, and ethnic diversity) may also influence trust indirectly, by affecting long-term economic development. Economic development has been proposed to weaken the influence of religious institutions (Verweij, Ester, & Nauta, 1997), and there is a strong negative correlation between religiosity and trust (Berggren & Bjørnskov, 2009), perhaps due to the in-group/out-group boundaries generated by religious institutions. Higher trust, greater economic wealth, less religiosity, and lower income inequality may operate in a feedback loop, accelerating societal stability and prosperity.…”

Trust at Work: A Study on Faith and Trust of Protestant Entrepreneurs in China

“…Niclas Berggren and Christian Bjørnskov [22] in their article provide a comprehensive summary of the findings: On the positive side, since all major religions call for behaving well toward others, they have been recognized as significant to stimulate social trust [23]. Studies also show that participation in voluntary association, including religious communities, generates and maintains trust [24][25][26].…”