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Religion and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from PSM Approach
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Among social-psychological issues regarded by a large number of scientific societies in recent years, one is the feeling of loneliness which is a representative evaluation of undesirable quality of social relations, and variables such as religiosity and mental health influence it. Therefore, the aim of current study is to investigate into the relation between religiosity as well as mental health, and experiencing the feeling of loneliness based on Durkheim and Weber approach in Tehran. The method used in this research is survey, and the statistical population under study is all adult (+18) Tehrani citizens, 524 of whom were selected through multistep cluster sampling method, evaluated by questionnaire, and the data were analyzed using SPSS software. The findings show that Tehrani’s religiosity was upper intermediate, more than a half of them experienced lower intermediate feeling of loneliness, and most of them are in an appropriate mental health condition. Also, between religiosity (-0.173) as well as mental health (-0.452), and the feeling of loneliness, there is a negative, meaningful relation, and individual’s religiosity and religious beliefs positively influence their mental health (0.117).
Religion has always rejected the concept of materialism and urged people to live in simplicity and moderation. Nonetheless, reality reveals a different phenomenon. Studies on religion and materialism have found inconsistent results. We examine the effect of religion on materialism and affective attitudes toward luxury goods and the mediating effect of materialism on affective attitude toward luxury goods. We propose the idea that many religious people reject the concept of materialism, but they consider luxury goods consumption compatible with their religious beliefs. 355 university students show that youth consumers with high intrinsic religiosity possess an affective attitude toward luxury goods. The results show that consumers perceived materialism and luxury goods as two separate constructs. Religious consumers reject the concept of materialism as an attachment to worldly possessions, but they maintain their emotional affection toward luxury goods. The results have several implications for both business and religious leaders. First, from a business perspective, there are no significant differences between religious and nonreligious youth consumers, especially in their acceptance of luxury goods. Simply put, religious youth consumers love God, but they also love Gucci (i.e., luxury goods). On the other hand, if religious leaders are teaching their congregations to reject materialism, they may need to shift the focus of their teaching from materialism to the role of luxury goods in their lives and how the purchase and ownership of luxury items may not reflect the true values of their beliefs.
Although prior research has explored religion, sustainable consumption, and subjective well‐being as isolated constructs, research has yet to explore the relations among these constructs. With religion as an enduring, wide‐reaching consumer value system, this research investigates how religious values inform attitudes toward and behaviors associated with sustainable consumption as well as resulting perceptions of subjective well‐being. Results from a survey conducted using a representative online panel revealed that religiosity has a positive influence on sustainable consumption practices, as well as showed that such sustainability positively influences consumer subjective well‐being. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
We present the first nationally representative evidence on the relationship between religion and subjective well-being for the case of China. Research on Western societies tends to find a positive association between being religious and level of well-being. China provides an interesting critical case as the religious population is growing rapidly and the religious and socioeconomic environments are profoundly different from Western societies, implying different mechanisms might be at work. We hypothesize to find a positive association between religion and well-being in China too, but argue social capital, for which strong evidence is often found in Western societies, is unlikely to be an important mechanism because religion in China is generally non-congregational. Instead, we argue that the private and subjective dimension of religion matters for well-being in China by helping adherents have an improved sense of social status relative to the non-religious in the context of rapid social change and growing inequality. Our results generally support these predictions.
While literature demonstrates that the relationship between religion and well-being is generally positive, information about the mechanisms is still far from clear. Two hundred and sixty-eight Chinese were recruited to examine how Protestant spirituality is related to well-being in Hong Kong. Path analysis demonstrated the complex relationship between various spirituality dimensions (religious belief, experience, and practice) and well-being variables, manifested in life satisfaction, social trust and sense of community. While spirituality may directly predict life satisfaction, the relationship between spirituality and social trust are fully mediated through sense of community. Furthermore, the well-being at the community level (feeling sense of community and social trust) appears to affect the well-being on the personal level (life satisfaction). These findings not only show that the influence of religion on people’s well-being can be richly diverse, but also match with the emerging literature on the positive effects of social capital on health and well-being. © 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht and The International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS)
Religion and spirituality have often been associated with the higher subjective well-being of individuals, but departures from this relationship have also been noted in previous research. We identified two important issues that may affect this relationship: the various measurements of religion, spirituality, and subjective well-being used, and the national cultural contexts in which the relationship is examined. Using the World Values Survey (World Values Survey Association, 2009, World Values Survey: 1981–2008. Official Aggregate, Version 20090901, ASEP/JDS, Madrid, Spain, http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSData.jsp), we found that both life satisfaction and happiness were positively associated with many measures of religion and spirituality, except for that of spiritual practice in different national contexts. In national cultures in which socialization for religious faith is more common, spiritual practice was positively related to subjective well-being, whereas in cultures where religious socialization is less prevalent, the relationship between spiritual practice and subjective well-being was reversed. In nations where social hostility toward religious groups is more intense, the positive association between belief in the authority of religious leaders and subjective well-being was stronger than in nations where such hostility was weaker. Different measures of religion and spirituality thus have varying relationships with measures of subjective well-being in different national contexts. Future research must accommodate this variability in conceptualizing the interface between cultural contexts and the psychology of religion and spirituality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
Culture can moderate which variables most influence subjective well-being (SWB). Because religion can be conceptualized as culture, religious differences can be considered cultural differences. However, there have been few studies comparing how different religious groups evaluate SWB at any given time. This study is among the first to investigate this issue. The present study compared Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, and atheists. In addition to demographic items, 451 Chinese adults completed Chinese version of the Socially Oriented Cultural Conception of SWB Scale. Religious belief was distributed as follows: 10 % Christian, 20 % Buddhist, 25 % Taoist, and 43 % atheists. As predicted, the socially oriented cultural conception of SWB was found to be highest among Buddhists, followed in order by Taoists, atheists, and Christians. It was concluded that the various religious groups achieved SWB in different ways.
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 well-being 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 it is cross-section data, we cannot establish causality; we do, however, explore: how or if the relationship between religion and well-being varies across the two distinct well-being 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 more means and agency; and how the relationship between religion and well-being varies depending on where respondents are in the well-being distribution. We find that the positive relation between evaluative well-being is more important for those respondents with lower levels of agency, while the positive relation with hedonic well-being 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.
This research explores the influence of religiosity on consumer perception of, and response toward, sexual appeals. The first study (survey, national sample; n = 423) examines the relationship between religiosity and consumer response toward sexual appeals using causal modeling. Study 1 finds that high intrinsic religiosity consumers exhibit more adverse ethical judgments toward the company’s use of sexual appeals and these judgments, in turn, result in inferior attitudes and purchase intent toward the advertised brand. To confirm and expand on these findings, the second study (experiment, young adult sample; n = 216) examines the influence of intrinsic religiosity on consumer response toward both sexual and nonsexual appeals. The results show that sexual appeals elicit inferior (superior) ethical judgments, attitudes, and purchase intent among consumers high (low) in intrinsic religiosity. In contrast, nonsexual appeals elicit (un)favorable responses from consumers who are (low) high in intrinsic religiosity.
We apply matching estimators to the large-scale British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set to estimate the impact of volunteering on subjective well-being. We take into account personality traits that could jointly determine volunteering behaviour and subjective well-being. We find that the impact of regular volunteering on subjective well-being is positive and increasing over time if regular volunteering is sustained. In a quantile analysis, we find that this effect seems to be driven by reducing the unhappiness of the less happy quantiles of the well-being distribution for those who volunteer regularly. We test the robustness of our findings and discuss their relevance for public policy.
Hardworking behaviour, one of the significant dimensions of work ethic, is among the most anticipated behaviours of employees working at all organizations. However, the research on the relation of hardworking with other variables is limited. In this study, it was intended to examine the influence of morality and religiosity on employees’ hardworking behaviours. For this purpose, the data (N=715) were collected from the employees working in manufacturing, service and trade organizations located in İstanbul, Ankara and Kocaeli. Findings of this research indicate that morality and religiosity are factors that both have positive impact on hardworking behaviour. In addition, it was found out that hardworking, religiosity and morality differs according to gender, marital status and education level of participants. It is suggested that this study will contribute to the literature with its findings on the relation of morality, religiosity and hardworking behaviour.
The propensity score is the conditional probability of assignment to a particular treatment given a vector of observed covariates. Both large and small sample theory show that adjustment for the scalar propensity score is sufficient to remove bias due to all observed covariates. Applications include: (i) matched sampling on the univariate propensity score, which is a generalization of discriminant matching, (ii) multivariate adjustment by subclassification on the propensity score where the same subclasses are used to estimate treatment effects for all outcome variables and in all subpopulations, and (iii) visual representation of multivariate covariance adjustment by a two- dimensional plot.
The aim of the present work was to test for an association between, and gender differences in, happiness, physical health, mental health, and religiosity. Four separate self-rating scales of these variables with good retest reliability were used. The sample comprised 2,210 male (n = 1,056) and female (n = 1,154) volunteer Kuwaiti undergraduates. Males had a significantly higher self-rating mean score of happiness and mental health than females, while females had a significantly higher religiosity mean score than their male counterparts. All the inter-correlations between the four self-ratings were significant and positive. They yielded one high loaded factor. Though the loadings were all high (>0.51), the ratings for happiness and mental health had the highest loadings (>0.82). Multiple regression revealed that the main predictor of happiness was mental health. Mental health accounted for 60% of the variance in predicting happiness, while religiosity accounted for around 15% of the variance in predicting happiness. However, the self-rating of physical health did not contribute significantly to the prediction of happiness. Based on the self-rating scales, the current data provide strong evidence that, among a large sample of Kuwaiti Muslim undergraduate students, religious people are happier.
W. Wilson's (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of "happiness." A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB. E. Diener's (1984) review placed greater emphasis on theories that stressed psychological factors. In the current article, the authors review current evidence for Wilson's conclusions and discuss modern theories of SWB that stress dispositional influences, adaptation, goals, and coping strategies. The next steps in the evolution of the field are to comprehend the interaction of psychological factors with life circumstances in producing SWB, to understand the causal pathways leading to happiness, understand the processes underlying adaptation to events, and develop theories that explain why certain variables differentially influence the different components of SWB (life satisfaction, pleasant affect, and unpleasant affect). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We use recently released, nationally representative data from the National Health Interview Survey—Multiple Cause of Death
linked file to model the association of religious attendance and sociodemographic, health, and behavioral correlates with
overall and cause-specific mortality. Religious attendance is associated with U.S. adult mortality in a graded fashion: People
who never attend exhibit 1.87 times the risk of death in the follow-up period compared with people who attend more than once
a week. This translates into a seven-year difference in life expectancy at age 20 between those who never attend and those
who attend more than once a week. Health selectivity is responsible for a portion of the religious attendance effect: People
who do not attend church or religious services are also more likely to be unhealthy and, conse-quently, to die. However, religious
attendance also works through increased social ties and behavioral factors to decrease the risks of death. And although the
magnitude of the association between religious attendance and mortality varies by cause of death, the direction of the association
is consistent across causes.
Presents a discussion of matching, randomization, random sampling, and other methods of controlling extraneous variation. The objective was to specify the benefits of randomization in estimating causal effects of treatments. It is concluded that randomization should be employed whenever possible but that the use of carefully controlled nonrandomized data to estimate causal effects is a reasonable and necessary procedure in many cases. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
This study compares the effects of religiosity on health and well-being, controlling for work and family. With 2006 GSS data, we assess the effects of religiosity on health and well-being, net of job satisfaction, marital happiness, and financial status. The results indicate that people who identify as religious tend to report better health and happiness, regardless of religious affiliation, religious activities, work and family, social support, or financial status. People with liberal religious beliefs tend to be healthier but less happy than people with fundamentalist beliefs. Future research should probe how religious identity and beliefs impact health and well-being.
Despite the increased interest in recent decades in the study of children's subjective well-being (SWB), studies in this area are still rare, especially cross-national large-scale surveys that study SWB of children from different nations and cultures. Only, few studies addressed the aspect of religion in cross cultural studies on children's SWB. The present study is among the first to investigate how children from different religion groups evaluate their SWB, utilizing the International Study of Children's Well-Being second wave data set with questionnaires from over including 38,000 children aged 10–12 from 16 countries around the world. We divided the full sample of children into six religion groups by the dominant religion in each country: Christian from Western countries (including Protestant and Catholic), Eastern Christians (Orthodox Christian), Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Asian-Christians/Buddhists. Our descriptive results indicate significant variations in children's SWB between different religion groups. We found that Jews, Muslims, and Eastern Christian children tend to be more satisfied with life as a whole as well as with different aspects of life (family, friends and self), and that Hindu and Asian-Christian/Buddhist children tend to be less happy and less satisfied. Yet, variations tests as well as regressions analysis indicates that religion explains only very little of the variance. Significant religion differences in the strength of the correlations between children's satisfaction with different life domains and between their satisfactions with their life as a whole were observed as well. Stronger correlations appeared among Asian-Christian/Buddhist children, and the weaker correlations were among Hindu children. Based on these results we conclude that religion structures the context in which children's SWB is formed. And that the SWB of children is being shaped differently in various religion cultures.
Purpose
This study aims to explore whether religiosity influences ecologically conscious consumption behaviour (ECCB) among Muslim consumers in India.
Design/methodology/approach
A structured questionnaire was developed and administered to a sample of 191 young male Muslim respondents. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post hoc tests were used to test the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
The results indicated a significant positive correlation between religiosity and ECCB. Pro-religious and intrinsically religious consumers reported higher importance to ECCB than non-religious and extrinsically religious consumers. It is, therefore, concluded that religiosity plays an important role in determining ECCB among Muslim consumers in India.
Research limitations/implications
The study sample comprised Indian university students as respondents, whose consumption behaviours may be constrained by limited independent income. Further, only male students have been included because of methodological considerations.
Practical implications
This study suggests that green marketers can use religiosity as a possible segmentation variable to effectively position their products. Religious messages or symbols can be invoked in advertising and other communication campaigns by marketers to gain acceptance for green products and consumption behaviours among consumers.
Originality/value
Few studies have examined the role of religiosity and its impact on consumer behaviour. The present study sought to address this gap in literature and offers preliminary insights about how marketers can effectively use religious symbols for marketing green products to consumers. The study is an initial attempt to provide elementary understanding about the consumption behaviour of Indian Muslims who have been insufficiently investigated by marketing and consumer researchers.
I examine the relationship between religious service attendance and two domains (cognitive and affective) of subjective well-being using Gallup Daily Poll data, which has a sample size over 1.3 million. I find that religious attendance is positively associated with both domains of subjective well-being in all religious traditions examined, including non-Christian traditions and "religious nones." The strength of the association varies significantly across the traditions: stronger among Christian groups-particularly among the groups that are, on average, more observant-than among non-Christian religions or "religious nones." The stronger association among the observant groups is partly due to the lower level of well-being among nonattendees in those groups than nonattendees in less observant groups. I also find that the association is stronger among individuals who consider religion an important part of life than among those who do not. Finally, my findings suggest that religious service attendance is equally strongly related to both domains of subjective well-being.
This book, the first of its kind, reviews and discusses the full range of research on religion and a variety of mental and physical health outcomes. Based on this research, the authors build theoretical models illustrating the various behavioural, psychological, and physiological pathways by which religion might affect health. They also review research that has explored the impact of religious affiliation, belief, and practice one use of health services and compliance with medical treatment. Finally, they discuss the implications of these findings, examine a number of possible clinical applications, and make recommendations for future research in this area
This authoritative volume reviews the breadth of current scientific knowledge on subjective well-being (SWB): its definition, causes and consequences, measurement, and practical applications that may help people become happier. Leading experts explore the connections between SWB and a range of intrapersonal and interpersonal phenomena, including personality, health, relationship satisfaction, wealth, cognitive processes, emotion regulation, religion, family life, school and work experiences, and culture. Interventions and practices that enhance SWB are examined, with attention to both their benefits and limitations. The concluding chapter from Ed Diener dispels common myths in the field and presents a thoughtful agenda for future research.
Much has been made of religious influences on a variety of human behaviors and outcomes. However, some researchers choose to attribute religious influences to selection effects or underlying personality traits. They suggest scholars should pay more attention to what underlies religiosity than what effects it may have. This manuscript engages the fundamental debate about the real influence of religious participation and salience in people's lives. We consider in this study the implications of selection effects for studies of religious influences, first by examining previous research evidence, and second by our own exploration of the effects of religion on three diverse outcomes during adolescence - family relations, health, and delinquency. The evidence suggests that two common measures of religiosity are indeed subject to selection processes, but that this does not appear easily to alter or diminish their independent effects. There is also evidence for a strategic inclination to be more religious, but this too fails to mitigate religious influences. Finally, skepticism in the form of reciprocal effects appears more plausible than selection effects.
Findings by Campbell et al. in The Quality of American Life suggesting that religious people tend to be somewhat less satisfied with their lives than the nonreligious are reexamined
in this paper. Using the same data source and variables it is shown that their interpretation is in error, and that to the
contrary, religion functions more as a resource than as compensation.
With data from the last available wave of the World Values Survey, we analyze the impact of different religions and the degree of religiosity on the work ethic of respondents. Following the theoretical literature, we predict that religiosity has a positive effect on work ethic for all religions (Hypothesis 1), that there is no significant difference in the work ethic of individuals from different religions (Hypothesis 2), and that the impact of religiosity on work ethic is lower for Protestants than for Catholics (Hypothesis 3). Due to the data structure, we apply a Multilevel Random Coefficient Model to test our hypotheses. While our data strongly support the first and the third hypothesis, the second hypothesis is only partially confirmed as Muslims report higher work ethic than individuals with other religions. We provide additional insights for the latter finding by disaggregating the data set by continents and levels of GDP per capita.
Religion as a basic faith commitment or ultimate concern infuses every aspect of family life. Although extra-domicilial religious practices tend to decrease during the later years, internalized religious attitudes and feelings apparently increase. Religious factors are related to the deprivations and family problems of the aging. Churches can contribute to family integration, the changing of societal values, the satisfaction of needs, and opportunities for meaningful service, but their activities sometimes have dysfunctional consequences also. Family practitioners should recognize the importance of spiritual well-being to every aspect of personal and family adjustment.
Although social scientists have convincingly demonstrated relationships between religious beliefs/practices and mental health, almost none of the empirical findings or related theory apply specifically to Jews. To address this limitation, we investigated the role of Jewish religiousness in anxiety, depression, and happiness, in a large Jewish community sample (n = 565). Several facets of global Jewish religiousness were examined, as well as a theoretically based Jewish religious variable, trust in God. A self-report measure of trust in God was created, and factor analyses yielded two reliable and valid subscales: trust in God and mistrust in God. Contrary to our hypotheses, global Jewish religiousness was on the whole unrelated to mental-health functioning. As expected, higher levels of trust in God were associated with less anxiety and depression, and greater personal happiness, whereas inverse associations emerged for the unanticipated but robust mistrust subscale.
An increased interest in the effects of religion and spirituality on health is apparent in the psychological and medical literature. Although religion in particular was thought, in the past, to have a predominantly negative influence on health, recent research suggests this relationship is more complex. This article reviews the literature on the impact of religion and spirituality on physical and mental health, concluding that the influence is largely beneficial. Mechanisms for the positive effect of religion and spirituality are proposed.
When assignment to treatment group is made solely on the basis of the value of a covariate, X, effort should be concentrated on estimating the conditional expectations of the dependent variable Y given X in the treatment and control groups. One then averages the difference between these conditional expectations over the distribution of X in the relevant population. There is no need for concern about "other" sources of bias, e.g., unreliability of X, unmeasured background variables. If the conditional expectations are parallel and linear, the proper regression adjustment is the simple covariance adjustment. However, since the quality of the resulting estimates may be sensitive to the adequacy of the underlying model, it is wise to search for nonparallelism and nonlinearity in these conditional expectations. Blocking on the values of X is also appropriate, although the quality of the resulting estimates may be sensitive to the coarseness of the blocking employed. In order for these techniques to be useful in practice, there must be either substantial overlap in the distribution of X in the treatment groups or strong prior information.
Using two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent
Health, this study examines two sets of relationships between attitudes,
religiosity, and first sex among adolescents. First, I estimate the
effects of religiosity and attitudes about sex on the likelihood of
engaging in first sex. Then, I estimate the effect of having sex on
subsequent religiosity and attitudes. The findings are consistent with
past research that finds attitudes are a significant predictor of sexual
activity. The effect of religiosity on first sex is mediated by attitudes
about sex. Regarding reciprocal effects, having sex for the first time
has a significant effect on later attitudes, but not religiosity. This
study highlights the importance of going beyond traditional, recursive
models that consider only one side of a causal relationship.
The aim of the present work was to test for an association between religiosity and happiness. One hundred and one undergraduate students completed the Francis Scale of Attitude Towards Christianity, the Depression-Happiness Scale (DHS), the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI), the Purpose in Life Test (PIL), and the Index of Self-Actualisation (ISA). It was found that higher scores on the Francis Scale were associated with higher scores on the DHS, the OHI, the PIL, and the ISA, providing evidence for a positive association between religiosity and these facets of subjective well-being. However, partial correlations suggested that the association between religiosity and happiness is a function of purpose in life.
Reports on a study designed to explore the effects of religion and
religiosity on perceived risk in purchase decisions. Asserts that
religious values represent the most basic element of a consumer's
cognitive world, and can be meaningfully related to lifestyles.
Concludes that religious individuals tend to perceive higher risks in
their purchase decisions.
Although religiosity tends to help older people to cope with physical and social losses, not all studies find a significant association between religious involvement and well-being in old age. It might be that primarily the intrinsic rather than the extrinsic aspect of religiosity is responsible for the positive effect of religiosity on well-being. Using a sample of 103 community dwelling older adults (58+), multivariate regression analyses showed that purpose in life rather than extrinsic or intrinsic religious orientation was positively related to elders' subjective well-being and negatively associated with fear of death and death avoidance. Moreover, extrinsic religious orientation had a positive effect on fear of death and death avoidance. Intrinsic religious orientation was positively related to approach acceptance of death. Frequency of shared spiritual activities and religious affiliation were unrelated to subjective well-being but positively related to death avoidance and fear of death, respectively. Those findings might explain why some studies that examine the effects of religion on well-being in old age produce contradictory or inconclusive results.
For over a century, social scientists have debated how educational attainment impacts religious belief. In this paper, I use Canadian compulsory schooling laws to identify the relationship between completed schooling and later religiosity. I find that higher levels of education lead to lower levels of religious participation later in life. An additional year of education leads to a 4-percentage-point decline in the likelihood that an individual identifies with any religious tradition; the estimates suggest that increases in schooling can explain most of the large rise in non-affiliation in Canada in recent decades.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
This article explores how religion shapes civic cultures through a cross-national study of voluntary association membership. I adopt a multi-level approach to examine the influence of religion at both individual and country level. First, I hypothesize that Protestants are more likely than Catholics to hold voluntary association membership. Second, I hypothesize that Protestant nations have a higher overall membership rate compared to Catholic nations. Third, I investigate if secularization has reduced individual-level Catholic-Protestant differences in voluntary association membership within a nation. I test the hypotheses using hierarchical nonlinear models with individual-level and country-level data from 29 nations. The findings show that Protestants are more likely than Catholics to be members of voluntary associations, while there is no difference between Protestants and those who belong to “Other” or no religions. At the same time, Catholic nations have lower overall membership rates compared to Protestant nations. The results can be interpreted as a “double negative” Catholic effect. Finally, the effect of secularization on Catholic-Protestant differences is statistically nonsignificant.
This study investigated the relationship between religious affiliation and level of religiosity and consumer product- and store-switching behavior among South Korean consumers. Comparisons in switching behavior are reported for three different denominational groups prevalent in South Korea (Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism), non-religious affiliated respondents, and among persons exhibiting different levels of religiosity. Religious affiliation, including non-affiliation, was not found to be significantly related to switching behavior. However, consumers reporting high levels of religiosity were found to be significantly less likely to engage in product purchase- and store-switching behaviors than those reporting lower levels of religiosity. Consumers reporting high levels of religiosity are also less likely to engage in product purchase switching behavior than non-religious affiliated consumers (i.e., no religiosity consumers). This pattern held across denominations. Statistically significant differences in switching behavior were not obtained between consumers reporting low levels of religiosity and those respondents who expressed no religious affiliation.
Copyright
This article is concerned with the conceptual and methodological issues in the measurement of personal goals, with special emphasis on assessing spiritual and religious content in goals. The research literature on personal goals and subjective well-being is reviewed and synthesized. A comparison of several popular goal units in the research literature is included. Goal content and goal conflict have been reliably associated with well-being in past research. Spiritual or religious content in personal goals emerges as having an especially strong influence on well-being, and recent research on spiritual personal strivings and well-being is summarized. One of the primary purposes of the article is to consider conceptual and methodological challenges in the measurement of spirituality through personal goals. The advantages of a combined idiographic-nomothetic approach to measuring spirituality through purposive behavior are enumerated. A personal goals approach to studying spiritual motivation can make an important contribution to understanding how religiosity affects well-being, thus expanding religion's role in quality of life research.
The Francis scale of attitude towards Christianity Form ASC4B was developed originally for use among 8–16 year olds. A slightly modified version of this scale ASC4B (Adult) was completed by 185 men and women between the ages of 18 and 64 years. The results support the unidimensionality, reliability and validity of this attitude scale among an adult population.
When explanatory variable data in a regression model are drawn from a population with grouped structure, the regression errors are often correlated within groups. Error component and random coefficient regression models are considered as models of the intraclass correlation. This paper analyzes several empirical examples to investigate the applicability of random effects models and the consequences of inappropriately using ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation in the presence of random group effects. The principal findings are that the assumption of independent errors is usually incorrect and the unadjusted OLS standard errors often have a substantial downward bias, suggesting a considerable danger of spurious regression.
Evidence from developed and developing countries alike demonstrates a strongly positive relationship between religiosity and happiness, particularly for women and particularly among the elderly. Using survey data from the oldest old in China, we find a strong negative relationship between religious participation and subjective well-being in a rich multivariate logistic framework that controls for demographics, health and disabilities, living arrangements, wealth and income, lifestyle and social networks, and location. In contrast to other studies, we also find that religion has a larger effect on subjective well-being on men than women.
This paper presents an empirical analysis of the importance of ‘comparison income’ for individual well-being or happiness. In other words, the influence of the income of a reference group on individual well-being is examined. The main novelty is that various hypotheses are tested: the importance of the own income, the relevance of the income of the reference group and of the distance between the own income and the income of the reference group, and most importantly the asymmetry of comparisons, i.e. the comparison income effect differing between rich and poor individuals. The analysis uses a self-reported measure of satisfaction with life as a measure of individual well-being. The data come from a large German panel known as GSOEP. The study concludes that the income of the reference group is about as important as the own income for individual happiness, that individuals are happier the larger their income is in comparison with the income of the reference group, and that for West Germany this comparison effect is asymmetric. This final result supports Dusenberry's idea that comparisons are mostly upwards.
Recent work suggests that a person’s subjective well-being (SWB) depends to a large degree on relative-income. Focusing on the underlying identification, this paper makes four contributions to this literature: it describes the aggregation problem with past studies, implements an estimation strategy to overcome this problem, finds micro-level evidence in support of the hypothesis that relative-income does matter in individual assessments of SWB, and uses cross-section estimates to replicate the aggregate time-series. The evidence further indicates that relative-income effects may be smaller at low income levels. The results are obtained from ordered probit techniques and the general social survey (GSS).
This paper examines whether involvement with religious organizations can help insure consumption and happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), we find that households who contribute to a religious organization are better able to insure their consumption against income shocks. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we find that individuals who attend religious services are better able to insure their happiness against income shocks. Overall, our results suggest that religious organizations provide insurance though the form of this insurance may differ by race.
Using an Italian survey, we investigate the effect of height on individual happiness. We find that a large part of the effect of height on well-being is driven by a positive correlation between height and economic and health conditions. However, for young men the effect of height on happiness persists even after controlling for these variables, implying that height is associated with some psycho-social direct effects on well-being. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that men care not only about their own height but also about the height of others in their reference group. Well-being is greater for individuals who are taller than other men in their reference group. Results are robust to different definitions of reference group and controlling for a number of other reference group characteristics.
Recent empirical research has demonstrated that countries with higher levels of religiosity are characterized by greater income inequality. We argue that this is due to the lower level of government services demanded in more religious countries. Religion requires that individuals make financial sacrifices and this leads the religious to prefer making their contributions voluntarily rather than through mandatory means. To the extent that citizen preferences are reflected in policy outcomes, religiosity results in lower taxes, which in turn implies lower levels of spending on both public goods and redistribution. Since measures of income typically do not fully take into account the part of income coming from donations received, this increases measured income inequality. We formalize these ideas in a general equilibrium political economy model and also show that the implications of our model are supported by cross-country data.
Causal effects are comparisons among values that would have been observed under all possible assignments of treatments to experimental units. In an experiment, one assignment of treatments is chosen and only the values under that assignment can be observed. Bayesian inference for causal effects follows from finding the predictive distribution of the values under the other assignments of treatments. This perspective makes clear the role of mechanisms that sample experimental units, assign treatments and record data. Unless these mechanisms are ignorable (known probabilistic functions of recorded values), the Bayesian must model them in the data analysis and, consequently, confront inferences for causal effects that are sensitive to the specification of the prior distribution of the data. Moreover, not all ignorable mechanisms can yield data from which inferences for causal effects are insensitive to prior specifications. Classical randomized designs stand out as especially appealing assignment mechanisms designed to make inference for causal effects straightforward by limiting the sensitivity of a valid Bayesian analysis.
We examine the physical and mental health effects of providing care to an elderly mother on the adult child caregiver. We address the endogeneity of the selection in and out of caregiving using an instrumental variable approach, and carefully control for baseline health and work status of the adult child using fixed effects and Arellano-Bond estimation techniques. Continued caregiving over time increases depressive symptoms for married women and married men. In addition, the increase in depressive symptoms is persistent for married men. Depressive symptoms for single men and women are not affected by continued caregiving. There is a small protective effect on the likelihood (10%) of having any heart conditions among married women who continue caregiving. Robustness checks confirm that the increase in depressive symptoms and decrease in likelihood of heart conditions can be directly attributable to caregiving behavior, and not due to a direct effect of the death of the mother. The initial onset of caregiving, by contrast, has no immediate effects on physical or mental health for any subgroup of caregivers.