{"id":555,"date":"2008-04-22T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2008\/04\/too-much-religion-is-bad-for-your-wealth.html"},"modified":"2014-11-14T05:33:36","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T04:33:36","slug":"too-much-religion-is-bad-for-your","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2008\/04\/too-much-religion-is-bad-for-your.html","title":{"rendered":"Too much religion is bad for your wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Conservative Protestants (AKA fundamentalists) in the US are poorer, on average, than the rest of the population. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.duke.edu\/%7Elkeister\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Lisa Keister<\/a>, Professor of Sociology at Duke University, has delved into the stats to find out why. Handily, she\u2019s also dug up some titbits about humanists as well.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out that part of the difference can be explained by the effects of their religion on their ability to earn. Conservative Protestants:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Are poorly educated. <\/span>This is because their beliefs don\u2019t fit with mainstream education, and so they home school instead. They also \u2018follow advice from church leaders who discourage attendance at secular colleges and universities\u2019 (again, to stop their children from being exposed to alternative ideas).<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Have more children, and younger.<\/span> Early reproduction further limits the opportunities for education and career development, and also means they have less to invest. Interestingly, wealth increases in families with one or two children (because it motivates people to invest for the future) but decreases with more.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold\">Have stay-at-home mums.<\/span> They are more likely to be single-earner households, especially when the children are young.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These factors account for some \u2013 but not all \u2013 of the relative poverty of the Conservative Protestants. Just what it is that accounts for the rest of the difference is unknown, but Prof Keister shows that they have a range of beliefs that might explain it. They think that money is the root of all evil, and that wealth prevents you from knowing god. They claim to give more away in charity, and they also think that their god will provide \u2013 and so there\u2019s no need to save for retirement or a rainy day.<\/p>\n<p>So much for the fundamentalists. What about the rest of us? Well, compared with mainstream Protestants and Catholics, Jews accumulate wealth faster and end up richer. But people with other religion or with no religion (that\u2019s us Humanists!) well, they\u2019re about the same.<\/p>\n<p>Religious leaders are fond of lecturing us on the perils of secularism \u2013 in particular that it brings with it materialism and selfish greed. This study is yet more evidence that they\u2019re  wrong. For better or worse, Humanists have similar material values to \u2018normal\u2019 Catholics and Protestants.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"padding: 5px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.researchblogging.org\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"ResearchBlogging.org\" src=\"https:\/\/www.researchblogging.org\/images\/rbicons\/ResearchBlogging-Medium-White.png\" height=\"50\" width=\"80\"><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Z3988\" title=\"ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&amp;rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&amp;rft.aulast=Keister&amp;rft.aufirst=Lisa%C2%A0A&amp;rft.au=Lisa%C2%A0A+ Keister&amp;rft.title=American+Journal+of+Sociology&amp;rft.atitle=Conservative+Protestants+and+Wealth%3A+How+Religion+Perpetuates+Asset+Poverty&amp;rft.date=2008&amp;rft.volume=113&amp;rft.issue=5&amp;rft.spage=1237&amp;rft.epage=1271&amp;rft.genre=article&amp;rft.id=info:DOI\/10.1086%2F525506\"><\/span>Keister, L. (2008). Conservative Protestants and Wealth: How Religion Perpetuates Asset Poverty. <span style=\"font-style: italic\">American Journal of Sociology, 113<\/span>(5), 1237-1271. DOI: <a rev=\"review\" href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1086\/525506\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">10.1086\/525506<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conservative Protestants (AKA fundamentalists) in the US are poorer, on average, than the rest of the population. Lisa Keister, Professor of Sociology at Duke University, has delved into the stats to find out why. Handily, she\u2019s also dug up some titbits about humanists as well. Turns out that part of the difference can be explained [&hellip;]<\/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-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Too much religion is bad for your wealth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Conservative Protestants (AKA fundamentalists) in the US are poorer, on average, than the rest of the population. 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