Religion, Social Networks, and Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Although the positive association between religiosity and life satisfaction is well documented, much theoretical and empirical controversy surrounds the question of how religion actually shapes life satisfaction. Using a new panel dataset, this study offers strong evidence for social and participatory mechanisms shaping religion's impact on life satisfaction. Our findings suggest that religious people are more satisfied with their lives because they regularly attend religious services and build social networks in their congregations. The effect of within-congregation friendship is contingent, however, on the presence of a strong religious identity. We find little evidence that other private or subjective aspects of religiosity affect life satisfaction independent of attendance and congregational friendship.Interest in subjective well-being has a long tradition in philosophy and psychology, but only recently have scholars across many disciplines begun to explore the question of happiness and life satisfaction. This emerging body of interdisciplinary literature embraces subjective perceptions of well-being as important indicators of quality of life. A main contribution of this literature is an improvement in the reliability and validity of measures of subjective well-being, such as self-rating questions about happiness and life satisfaction (e.g., Diener et al. 1999;Kahneman and Krueger 2006). These studies suggest that subjective aspects of quality of life can be quantified and systematically analyzed.A wide range of factors can influence subjective well-being (Campbell, Converse, and Rodgers 1976). For example, numerous studies find religion to be closely related to life satisfaction and happiness (e.g., Ferriss 2002;Greeley and Hout 2006;Hadaway 1978;Inglehart 2010). However, much theoretical and empirical controversy surrounds the question of how religion actually shapes individuals' well-being. Some studies emphasize social networks that people find in religious organizations as the major source of well-being (e.g., Krause 2008), others examine private and subjective aspects of religion (e.g., Greeley and Hout 2006). While both approaches are plausible, it remains unclear which aspect of religion plays a more significant role and how these dimensions might interact to shape subjective well-being.

Religion, Politics, and the Social Capital of Children

“…Children alone are not serving as political capital, as increasing numbers result in decreased political behavior. Traditionalism, measured by religious belief and church attendance, appears to confirm earlier studies of the influence of religious identity and involvement in building social capital for voting and following politics (Lim and Putnam 2010;Smidt et al 2003). Children only emerge as a form of social capital when combined with religious traditionalism or political conservatism, and though the effect is not universal across the dependent variables in this study, this pattern emerges for both men and women.…”

“…Through school and extracurricular activities, children often involve their parents in social networks with other parents and the broader community (Offer and Schneider 2007;Sapiro 2006). In addition, involvement in religious communities, especially as it translates to building friendships in congregations, contributes to well being and the generation of social capital that can translate into civic engagement (Lim and Putnam 2010;Putnam 2000;Smidt et al 2003;Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995;Wald, Kellstedt and Leege 1993) This involvement seems to be 4 especially effective for those with strong religious identities or those that report the importance of religion in their lives (Lim and Putnam 2010). The importance of religion measure also has been linked to increased intended and actual fertility in women (Hayford and Morgan 2008), indicating that women with strong religious identities purposefully tend to have more children than their peers and may also be reaping the benefits of congregational as well as child-induced social networking.…”

“…Their families may not be larger than most, but the presence of children in the home may affect political engagement differently for evangelical mothers as compared to their peers. The involvement of women in forming the Christian Right (Critchlow 2005;Klatch 1988) and the possibility of overcoming the political barrier of raising children with sufficient political interest (High-Pippert 1999) suggest that the same family values which lead to having more children may translate into a type of social capital that leads to political engagement (Lim and Putnam 2010;Offer and Schneider 2007;Smidt et al 2003;Everitt 2006). Specifically, the 1 interaction between an individual's religiosity and his or her number of children may influence political participation.…”

Economic Hardship and Well-Being: Examining the Relative Role of Individual Resources and Welfare State Effort in Resilience Against Economic Hardship

“…The direct effect has been studied repeatedly (Ellison and Levin 1998;Lim and Putnam 2010), with a causal mechanism that encompasses two processes (for a review, see George et al 2002). A first traditional argument is that social integration explains the link between religiosity and well-being (Durkheim 1951(Durkheim [1897).…”

Left behind but doing good? Civic engagement in two post-socialist countries

“…16 Next, we also include a religiosity variable which is a binary indicator for whether the respondent believes that religion is important in his or her life. The literature identifies religiosity as a component of social capital, which could be formed by attending religious services, for example (Lim & Putnam, 2010). Specifically for transition economies, religion serves as a "social insurance" alleviating the painful reforms and volatility that the transition process entailed (Popova, 2014).…”