{"id":210,"date":"2011-01-28T22:35:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-28T22:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/01\/less-god-and-more-democracy.html"},"modified":"2014-11-03T18:40:38","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T17:40:38","slug":"less-god-and-more-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2011\/01\/less-god-and-more-democracy.html","title":{"rendered":"Less God and more democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/div>\n

A new analysis<\/a> from the University of Zurich rates 30 nations on the strength of their democracy. All interesting stuff, but it\u2019s at times like this that I like to ask \u2018How does it correlate with religion\u2019.<\/p>\n

So, if you were wondering the same, here\u2019s the answer. Those countries whose population rated God as less important in their lives, were also the countries where democracy is strongest.<\/p>\n

The relationship is statistically significant, with an r-squared of 0.16 (which means that about 16% of the variation in god-belief can be \u2018explained\u2019 by variation in democracy \u2013 or vice-versa).<\/p>\n

Not a great surprise, of course. It\u2019s just the latest in a long line of similar results \u2013 the least religious countries are more peaceful<\/a>, have less corruption<\/a>, more telephones<\/a>, do better at science<\/a>, have less inequality and other problems<\/a>, and are generally just less dysfunctional<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As usual, those dastardly Scandinavian countries, with their strong social welfare programmes, liberal morals, and strong social ethics, come out on top on both scores.<\/p>\n

This is a nice sample of nations, though. Because they\u2019re mostly pretty wealthy (the poorest, South Africa and Costa Rica, have per-capita GDPs around $10k<\/a>), it\u2019s not too badly distorted by wealth.<\/p>\n

Just a note on the data. The religion numbers come from Waves 4 and 5 of the World Values Survey (I used Wave 5, unless a country was only represented in Wave 4). I used the \u201cImportance of God\u201d question because it\u2019s the only one asked consistently in both Waves.<\/p>\n

The democracy number \u201cuses 100 empirical indicators to measure how well a country complies with the three democratic principles of freedom, equality and control as well as the nine basic functions of democracy\u201d (Science Daily<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So there you go. More evidence that the least religious countries are the best places to live. Who\u2019da thunk?<\/p>\n

\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span> This article by Tom Rees<\/b> was first published on Epiphenom<\/a>. It is licensed under Creative Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new analysis from the University of Zurich rates 30 nations on the strength of their democracy. All interesting stuff, but it\u2019s at times like this that I like to ask \u2018How does it correlate with religion\u2019. So, if you were wondering the same, here\u2019s the answer. Those countries whose population rated God as less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nLess God and more democracy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new analysis from the University of Zurich rates 30 nations on the strength of their democracy. 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