A global assessment of the relationship between religiosity and financial satisfaction

Abstract

This article explores the economics of religion with a specific focus on divergent effects of religiosity on people’s financial satisfaction. There is ever-growing literature on the sociology of religion-life satisfaction nexus but there is still dearth of research on how religiosity may affect citizens’ outlook toward their economic affluence and finances. We argue that religiosity has to be understood under two major vantage points, through which it can affect financial satisfaction. Specifically, we maintain that social, community-related religiosity and individual, devoutness-related religiosity have distinctly pivotal and empirically quadratic effects on people’s financial satisfaction. This finding is illuminating to understand how social dynamics may shape people’s stance and outlook toward their subjective financial well-being and how this may have repercussions at the individual and societal levels. We test our arguments in light of the global World Values Survey data via a multilevel estimation framework.

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