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Religious Differences in Self-Rated Health Among US Jews: Findings from Five Urban Population Surveys

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Abstract

Research findings on religion and health among Jews are in relatively short supply. While recent studies report on the health of Israelis and the mental health of Jews in the USA, little information exists on the physical health of US Jews, especially from population surveys. In this study, data are analyzed from five urban surveys of Jews conducted since 2000: two surveys from New York (N = 4,533; N = 5,993) and one apiece from Chicago (N = 1,993), Philadelphia (N = 1,217), and Boston (N = 1,766). A strategy of two-way ANCOVA with interaction was used to test for differences in self-rated health across five categories of Jewish religious affiliation (secular, Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox) and four categories of synagogue attendance (from never to at least weekly). Findings, adjusted for age and effects of other covariates, reveal that affiliated and synagogue-attending Jews report moderately better health than secular and non-attending Jews.

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Notes

  1. Why just these five samples and not others? For one, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston represent major Jewish urban population centers for which data from surveys with large sample sizes and conducted since 2000 were available. Another obvious candidate, the 1997 Los Angeles Jewish Population Survey, was considered on account of the large Jewish population in southern California, but its single health variable was constructed with a metric that did not match the other studies and, moreover, data were not available on health for half the sample. Further, the public data were available only with recodes of Jewish religious affiliation and synagogue attendance; original raw responses were not available. Also, the information is somewhat dated compared to the other studies, all of which were conducted in the new century. Many other large urban centers with substantial Jewish populations were also considered, but either the respective survey did not include a health variable or the data were too old or the sample too small.

  2. The phrase “just Jewish” has become a branding mechanism for cultural, secular, non-religious, and humanist Jews, e.g. according to the National Youth Organization of Humanistic Jews (http://www.hujews.org/hb-hj.htm). Preliminary analyses showed that respondents in the just Jewish and secular or humanist categories did not differ significantly by age, gender, health, synagogue attendance, and importance of religion in at least four of the five samples. Thus, they were combined for purposes of this study.

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Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented as part of the Presidential Panel at the 76th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion (ASR), San Francisco, CA, August 15, 2014. Data used in this study were made available from the Berman Jewish DataBank at the Jewish Federations of North America (http://www.jewishdatabank.org/), a program in partnership with the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU Wagner and the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut. Samples included the Jewish Community Study of New York: 2002 (PIs: Jacob B. Ukeles and Ron Miller; Sponsor: UJA-Federation of New York); the Jewish Community Study of New York: 2011 (PIs: Steven M. Cohen, Jacob B. Ukeles, Ron Miller, Pearl Beck, David Dutwin, and Swetlana Shmulyian; Sponsor: UJA-Federation of New York); the 2010 Metropolitan Chicago Jewish Community Study (PIs: Jacob Ukeles, Ron Miller, and David Dutwin; Sponsor: Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago); the 2009 Population Survey of Greater Philadelphia (PI: Etienne Phipps; Sponsor: Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia); and the Greater Boston 2005 Community Study (PIs: Leonard Saxe, Benjamin Phillips, Charles Kadushin, Graham Wright, and Daniel Parmer; Sponsor: Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston).

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Levin, J. Religious Differences in Self-Rated Health Among US Jews: Findings from Five Urban Population Surveys. J Relig Health 54, 765–782 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-014-9998-9

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