Why is religion stronger in economically unequal societies?

[muriel_volestrangler]

...
In other words, in economically skewed societies, both the rich and the poor are more religious. In fact, they found that, for nearly all of the measures of religiosity, when societies are more unequal, the richer people become more religious than the poorer people (this association was positive for all 12 measures of religiosity and was statistically significant for four).

This last finding is important because it bears on two hypotheses about why unequal societies are more religious. The first, called the “deprivation theory,” is that in economically unequal societies, poorer folks turn to religion for reassurance and comfort. This is certainly the hypothesis I believed before I read this paper. The second hypothesis, which is the authors’ theory, is called the “relative power theory.” This holds that as societies become more economically unequal, richer people become more religious so they can disseminate religion to those who aren’t so fortunate.
...
Their two findings from this analysis are:

“Increases in inequality in one year predict substantial gains in religiosity in the next,” while “past values of religiosity do not predict future values of inequality.” In other words, the correlation between religiosity and inequality is driven by the former responding to the latter, and not the other way around. Unequal incomes lead to societies becoming more religious.
“Holding inequality constant, gains in per-capita GDP are estimated to depress subsequent levels of aggregate religiosity.” In other words, increasing the average economic well being of people makes them less religious.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/why-is-economic-inquality-associated-with-religiosity/

Link to the paper (abstract only, but maybe some here can get full access: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00777.x/abstract )

Jerry Coyne (the blogger) seems unconvinced that there is good evidence that rich people encourage the poor the be religious, as a whole (there are certainly some who encourage other to be religious so they themselves can get rich, eg Pat Robertson, but that's a bit different). But it is interesting that the analysis over time points to inequality encouraging religiosity.

[OHdem10]

1. Why do you think the GOP deliberately brought the Religious

Right into their fold. Reagan worked hard to bring
them in and make them Republicans???

[Ian David]

2. You'll get pie in the sky when you die

Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips : 'Pie In The Sky'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhhzElzTZJw

[Jim__]

3. The "Aggregate Religiosity in the US" chart is negatively correlated with the USgini coefficient ...

... across the same period (US Gini coefficient scores over time):

1929: 45.0 (estimated)

1947: 37.6 (estimated)

1967: 39.7 (first year reported)

1968: 38.6 (lowest index reported)

1970: 39.4

1980: 40.3

1990: 42.8

2000: 46.2

2005: 46.9

2006: 47.0 (highest index reported)

The implication being that this relationship is more complicated than the article indicates.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. The article also points out that increases in GDP are correlated with decreases in religiosity

“Holding inequality constant, gains in per-capita GDP are estimated to depress subsequent levels of aggregate religiosity.” In other words, increasing the average economic well being of people makes them less religious. was the end of the excerpt I posted. I think the article recognises the complexity.

[Jim__]

5. The first conclusion of the analysis directly contradicts what we're seeing in the US.

From the article (my bolding):

Their two findings from this analysis are:

1.“Increases in inequality in one year predict substantial gains in religiosity in the next,” while “past values of religiosity do not predict future values of inequality.” In other words, the correlation between religiosity and inequality is driven by the former responding to the latter, and not the other way around. Unequal incomes lead to societies becoming more religious.

2.“Holding inequality constant, gains in per-capita GDP are estimated to depress subsequent levels of aggregate religiosity.” In other words, increasing the average economic well being of people makes them less religious.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. And, right before that:

"They also factored in general well being of the society (per-capita gross domestic product, or GDP)."

Your post of the Gini numbers alone does not take per capita GDP, which has increased substantially over that period, into account. Their analysis is more sophisticated than yours, and more than you think theirs is.

[Jim__]

10. 1.“Increases in inequality in one year predict substantial gains in religiosity in the next,”

Their first conclusion does not say anything about GDP. It explicitily states: Increases in inequality in one year predict substantial gains in religiosity in the next. We don't see that. Their 2nd conclusion states the holding inequality constant, gains in per capita GDP are estimated to depress subsequent levels of aggregate religiosity. The one example we have (based on the article, not the paper) is not addressed by their findings. We have an increasing GDP with increasing inequality, and increasing inequality with decreasing religiosity. The paper may well cover the situation. The article doesn't. I haven't read the paper, but the article, effectively presents one example, and that example doesn't appear to support the findings; or may not be addressed by the findings.

I don't know what the paper says. But I expect that different societies will behave differently. The paper may address those complexities. The article doesn't - and so, for me, raises more questions than it answers.

[dmallind]

6. Perfectly reasonable link really.

When you are poor and in want, images of eternal satiety are a much more powerful sell than to those for whom satiety is normal.

When you are oppressed and marginalized, promises of justice and self-worth are a better draw than they would be if you already had them.

To whom do you think the mantra "So the last shall be first, and the first last" was meant to appeal?

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Yes, but the finding that the rich also show increased religiosity

isn't explained by that. That's what's makes this new study interesting, IMO.

[dmallind]

9. I confess I missed that bit. I shall dig deeper. nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

12. Increased fear of becoming poor by seeing so much poverty around them, maybe? -nt

Or fear of the torches and pitchforks?

[unblock]

11. religion helps people feel comfortable in otherwise uncomfortable situations

in this case, economic inequality should be a cause for solving the problem.

but religion helps the poor stay complacent and helps the rich feel less guilty.

[Taverner]

13. Pie in the sky - when people lose hope, they place their bets on cloudland

[Igel]

14. Offhand, codswallop.

I could be wrong, of course.

There's a lot of linguistics that tries or at least tried to draw meaningful conclusions from the current linguistic state of a language. Grand schemes and bizarre classifications were set up, all kinds of things attributed to speakers' intuitions.

But while we can't confuse the historical development with the current state of a language, a lof of what shows up is detritus, flotsam and jetsum from previous linguistic states mixed in with regular changes and happenstance borrowings.

One big insight wasn't to read significant meaning in a language's current state, but to look at many languages' developmental paths and find patterns there. No one language says much about human linguistic ability. Lots of languages' current states do, but that requires a bit of caution--you sometimes get quirky systems that are highly unstable cross-linguistically. But another way of looking at things is to see how many languages have changed over time and look for patterns. Often the quirks are recent in origin, happened in other languages but were transitional. That is, the insight from them isn't that we need to account for them in any kind of central way because speakers, in fact, don't like them and don't put up with them for long. You then have to account for speakers' tolerating them for a few hundred years, not much more.

300 years ago most areas were religious, and frequently traditionally so. Since then things have changed in some places more than others. So I'd suspect that the generalization cited that wealth produces irreligion is probably true. Equal societies are also fairly few and not all that old, the equality driven by representation that empowers the majority but also by a fair amount of older social upheaval and ideological agitation. That might be small number stats biting them in the rump, because it's very likely that religion was a damned big deal 10 000 years ago when societies were actually more equal than today.

I've also heard it rumored that societies that are unequal have a greater need for cohesion. A rather less cynical approach than saying the upper classes need to somehow teach the lower classes to be religious for their own ends, or that the upper classes are religious for some other purpose. Without cohesion, there's no society; an vastly unequal grouping with no social cohesion won't last long, and will be replaced by a more equal society or a more cohesive unequal society. (Meaning, again, that for a while you could get a system that breaks the usual pattern and doesn't really have to be accounted for in any principled synchronic way.)

Note that the cohesion, the glue, doesn't have to be religious. It can just as well be nationalism or ideology. The USSR was cohesive even given a fair amount of inequality, and China manages to hold itself together partly by ideology, but these days as much by nationalism. (Which was also a nice unifier for countries as diverse as Hitler's Germany and, to a lesser extent, present day Mexico and Venezuela.)

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. I'm not sure what bit you're calling codswallop

All you seem to be saying is that other things, like nationalism or ideology, could be an alternative 'glue' to hold together an unequal society. I can't see anything in the blog that says religion must be the one thing holding unequal societies together.