Religion and wellbeing around the world: Social purpose, social time, or social insurance?

Abstract

Abstract:A number of studies find that religious people are happier than non-religious ones. Yet a number of fundamental questions about that relationship remain unanswered. A critical one is the direction of causality: does religion make people happier or are happier people more likely to have faith in something that is beyond their control? We posit that the relationship between religion and wellbeing is mediated by factors ranging from intrinsic purpose, to its social aspects, to its role as an insurance mechanism for people who face great adversity. We explore a number of related questions, using world-wide data from the Gallup World Poll. As these data are crosssection data, we cannot establish causality; we do, however, explore: how or if the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies across the two distinct wellbeing dimensions (hedonic and evaluative); how social externalities mediate the relationship; how the relationship changes as countries and people within them become more prosperous and acquire greater means and agency; and how the relationship between religion and wellbeing varies depending on where respondents are in the wellbeing distribution. We find that the positive relation between religion and evaluative wellbeing is more important for respondents with lower levels of agency, while the positive relation with hedonic wellbeing holds across the board. The social dimension of religion is most important for the least social respondents, while the religiosity component of religion is most important for the happiest respondents, regardless of religious affiliation or service attendance. As such, it seems that the happiest are most likely to seek social purpose in religion, the poorest are most likely to seek social insurance in religion, and the least social are the most likely to seek social time in religion.

Religion and Subjective Well‐Being Across Religious Traditions: Evidence from 1.3 Million Americans

“…However, his finding is not directly comparable to the current study since my measure of the affective domain is different from the one employed in his study, which used the single‐item self‐reported happiness measure in the General Social Survey. A recent study that used a similar measure to ours reports a finding that is more consistent with ours (Graham and Crown ), implying that how these different domains of subjective well‐being are measured can be important.…”

“…This study also examines religion's relationship with both the cognitive and the affective domains of subjective well-being. With the exception of a few (e.g., Ellison 1991;Graham and Crown 2014), most previous studies on religion and subjective well-being have measured well-being with a single survey question on life satisfaction or general happiness. The former is considered to mostly reflect the cognitive domain; the latter arguably taps into the affective domain, but studies have shown that self-reported happiness also has a substantial cognitive component (Diener et al 2010) and often behaves similarly to measures of the cognitive domain (e.g., Putnam and Helliwell 2004).…”

“…Many of these studies are U.S.‐based, but a growing number of studies have explored the relationship between religious participation and subjective well‐being in other countries as well. Some of them have focused on non‐Western nations, especially those with non‐Christian religious cultures (e.g., Campante and Yanagizawa‐Drott ; Graham and Crown ; Kortt, Dollery, and Grant ; Suhail and Chaudhry ; Tiliouine, Cummins, and Davern ). Many of these non‐U.S.…”

“…Many of these studies are U.S.-based, but a growing number of studies have explored the relationship between religious participation and subjective well-being in other countries as well. Some of them have focused on non-Western nations, especially those with non-Christian religious cultures (e.g., Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott 2013;Graham and Crown 2014;Kortt, Dollery, and Grant 2015;Suhail and Chaudhry 2004;Tiliouine, Cummins, and Davern 2009). Many of these non-U.S. based studies report a similar positive association between religious involvement and subjective well-being, although the strength of the association might be stronger in some countries than others (e.g., Inglehart 2010).…”

The Local Conception of Wellbeing in Lao Social Cultural Construction

“…Mental health includes seeing their children grow up and succeed, spirits of the Lao people who are happy in their occupation, living in the safe environment, having good leader and public management, proud and satisfied with their living, meriting and doing religion's activities. Especially for religion it is an important dimension of human experience which is positive relation with wellbeing (Graham & Crown, 2014).…”