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{"id":436,"date":"2009-03-09T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T20:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/03\/religion-makes-people-in-poor-countries-but-not-rich-ones-happier.html"},"modified":"2014-11-13T18:49:04","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T17:49:04","slug":"religion-makes-people-in-poor-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/03\/religion-makes-people-in-poor-countries.html","title":{"rendered":"Religion makes people in poor countries (but not rich ones) happier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a> $\"\"$ <\/a>Gallup has released a new analysis<\/a> looking at the relationship between happiness and religiosity in different countries around the world (the data come from their 143-nation survey they ran in 2007-8). What\u2019s interesting about this one is they selected out two groups: the very rich (mean incomes in excess of $25,000) and the very poor (mean incomes less than $2,000).<\/p>\n

They found that the poor countries were very much more religious than the rich ones. In poor countries, 92% of people say religion is very important to them, but that drops to 44% in rich countries. No surprises there.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting, though, is the difference between the religious and non-religious in happiness. In rich countries, there\u2019s virtually no difference. In poor countries, the difference is striking. The two graphs I\u2019ve pulled out show this.<\/p>\n

The first is from the poor countries. Religious people enjoy life more, worry less, and experience less sadness, depression and anger.<\/p>\n

The second is from rich countries. Not only has the difference disappeared, but religious people are in fact sadder and more depressed! That\u2019s a very surprising result, and might well be down to depressed people \u2018self-medicating\u2019 with religion.<\/p>\n

I guess a lot of people won\u2019t be surprised by these findings. But they demonstrate nicely what\u2019s these days a fairly unfashionable idea in the sociology of religion. People sign up to religion because, if you\u2019re at the bottom of the heap, it makes you feel special.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"