Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Religiosity and Life Satisfaction Across Countries: New Insights from the Self-Determination Theory

  • Research Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Happiness Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper we try to shed new light on the aggregate religion puzzle: the fact that the positive relationship between religiosity and cognitive subjective well-being that has been consistently found at the individual level does not emerge at the aggregate level. We posit the hypothesis that the motivation underlying the observance of religious prescriptions may be confounding the relationship of interest. Using data from the Integrated Values Survey 1981–2014, we select some variables as possible proxies for the prevalent religious motivation and discuss this novel interpretation. Then we extend a standard cross-country life satisfaction model including controls for both the average level of religiosity and the prevalent motivation. Results show that the average level of religiosity is ceteris paribus positive and significantly associated with average life satisfaction. Moreover, our main proxy for the prevalent religious motivation also emerges highly significantly associated with average life satisfaction. The estimations are subjected to a wide variety of robustness checks and results remain largely unchanged. Moreover we carry out a thoroughly discussion of the endogeneity issues that may affect our results exploiting the panel nature of the data. We conclude that our results seem reasonably reliable, are consistent with findings of the previous literature, and point to a possible explanation of the different evolution of the religious phenomenon across countries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Norris and Inglehart (2004) point out that the traditional secularization theory comprises two complementary theses. The first one concerns religious values and believes, and the second one the role of religion in sustaining social solidarity and cohesion. The former is mostly owed to Max Weber and basically asserts that the gradual spread of a rational view of the world based on empirical standards of proof, scientific knowledge of natural phenomena, and technological mastery of the universe may progressively undermine religious values and believes. The other thesis is mostly owed to Emile Durkheim and states that the increasing number of specialized professionals and organizations and the expansion of the welfare state may gradually substitute religions in the provision of healthcare, education, social control, and welfare safety nets. The problem is that these theses are at odds with the evidence that religions have not disappeared from the world, not even from the most socio-economically developed countries.

  2. Reported life satisfaction is a commonly used measure of cognitive subjective well-being (Luhmann et al. 2012). Other usual measures are Cantril Ladder life evaluations and reported happiness with life overall (Helliwell et al. 2015). We are interested in cognitive subjective well-being in general; consequently in the literature review we may use the term life satisfaction, life evaluation, or overall happiness depending on the specific measure used by the different researchers. Moreover, following a standard practice we may use the term ‘life evaluation’ to refer to any cognitive evaluation of life overall, thus encompassing the three previously seen measures.

  3. Graham and Chattopadhyay (2009) do not find the usual positive association between religiosity and overall happiness in Afghanistan. They argue that in this country, contrary to what happens in other places, religion is a subject of extreme political and societal divisions. Otherwise, evidence shows that not being affiliated to the majority religious denomination in a country moderates the overall association between religiosity and life evaluations (Clark and Lelkes 2009; Graham and Crown 2014).

  4. Inglehart et al. (2008) find that the aggregate level of religiosity predicts future average (cognitive) subjective well-being. However their sample of countries is very limited.

  5. Internalization refers “to the process through which an individual transforms a formerly externally prescribed regulation or value into an internal one” (Ryan et al. 1993:586).

  6. In the light of the self-determination theory, the government restrictions on religious freedom examined by Hayward and Elliott (2014) may reflect the prevalence of an external form of regulation. The finding of a positive interaction between religious freedom and personal religiosity suggests that, as the self-determination theory predicts, the association between religiosity and life satisfaction is higher in those countries in which religious individuals are more autonomous. In fact, Hayward and Elliott’s (2014) interpretation in terms of the self-categorization theory is very much in line with the interpretation suggested by the self-determination theory.

  7. In the EVS and the second wave of the WVS this question includes eight response categories: “more than once a week,” “once a week,” “once a month,” “Christmas/Easter day,” “other specific holy days,” “once a year,” “less often,” “never, practically never.” In the rest of WVS rounds, categories “Christmas/Easter day” and “other specific holy days” are merged under the category “only on special holy days.” We transform previous data accordingly.

  8. This measure assesses a current social norm that may differ from the social norm affecting respondents in their childhood. However, we are interested on the contemporaneous effect of the current social norm. Besides, we expect this social norm to be rather stable, as is the case with other cultural traits (e.g., Alesina and Giuliano, 2010, regarding values concerning the family).

  9. In the EVS and first three waves of the WVS this question includes five response categories: ‘very good,’ ‘good,’ ‘fair,’ ‘poor,’ and ‘very poor.’ Since the fourth wave of the WVS this health measure has been transformed into a 4-point scale variable merging last two categories (‘poor’ and ‘very poor’). We transform previous data accordingly.

  10. Helliwell et al. (2017) mention four public institutions: police, legal system, parliament and politicians. We focus on police and parliament to maximise the sample size.

  11. Due to data constraints we do not control for generosity in our main estimations, however we would perform some robustness checks controlling for altruism using a smaller sample and data from Helliwell et al. (2019).

  12. We keep individuals aged 18 + years. We drop observations from Bosnia from the third wave of the WVS because the sample is not representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina. We merge observations from Northern Cyprus and Cyprus from the fourth wave of the EVS to have representative data for Cyprus at a whole—observations are weighted according to the population of each of these entities in that year according to the Statistical Service Republic of Cyprus (2009). Regarding observations from Serbia and Montenegro from the fifth wave of the WVS, according to the study description included in the results book of the fifth wave the target population was the population of Serbia of voting age, therefore we assign such observations to Serbia.

  13. Western Europe; Central and Eastern Europe; Commonwealth of Independent States; South Asia; South-east Asia; East Asia; Latin America and the Caribbean; North America, Australia and New Zealand; Middle East and North Africa; and Sub-Saharan Africa.

  14. All computations were performed with R version 3.6.1 (R Core Team, 2018), using the package clubSandwich (Pustejovsky, 2019) for the estimation of cluster-robust standard errors.

  15. The estimation of model 11 suggests that the coefficient on attend in model 5 is capturing part of the effect of the other two religiosity variables. In this regard, the joint contribution of the three religiosity variables is almost marginally significant in model 11, although we cannot reject the hypothesis that the coefficients on attend, religious, and god are zero (F = 2.065, p-value = 0.106).

  16. In the last two rounds of the WVS (fifth and sixth) the wording of the second response category has changed from “rather happy” to “quite happy.”.

  17. Personality traits are not expected to be a source of bias at the country level.

  18. Table 8 in the appendix shows the frequencies of the religious variables.

References

  • Alesina, A., & Giuliano, P. (2010). The power of the family. Journal of Economic Growth, 15(2), 93–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barro, R. J., & McCleary, R. M. (2003). Religion and economic growth across countries. American Sociological Review, 68(5), 760.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baumeister, R. F. (2002). Religion and Psychology: Introduction to the special issue. Psychological Inquiry, 13(3), 165–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bjørnskov, C., Dreher, A., & Fischer, J. A. V. (2008). Cross-country determinants of life satisfaction: Exploring different determinants across groups in society. Social Choice and Welfare, 30(1), 119–173.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonini, A. N. (2008). Cross-national variation in individual life satisfaction: Effects of national wealth, human development, and environmental conditions. Social Indicators Research, 87(2), 223–236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Campante, F., & Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2015). Does Religion Affect Economic Growth And Happiness? Evidence from Ramadan. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 130(2), 615–658.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A., Fleche, S., Layard, R., Powdthavee, N., & Ward, G. (2017). The key determinants of happiness and misery. In J. Helliwell, R. Layard, & J. Sachs (Eds.), World happiness report 2017 (pp. 122–143). New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, A., & Lelkes, O. (2006). Deliver us from Evil: Religion as insurance (Papers on Economics of Religion No. 06/03). Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada.

  • Clark, A., & Lelkes, O. (2009). Let us pray: Religious interactions in life satisfaction (No. halshs-00566120).

  • Deaton, A. (2008). Income, health, and well-being around the world: Evidence from the gallup world poll. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22(2), 53–72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Deaton, A., & Stone, A. A. (2013). Two happiness puzzles. American Economic Review, 103(3), 591–597.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diener, E., & Seligman, M. (2004). Beyond money: toward an economy of well-being. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5(1), 1–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diener, E., Tay, L., & Myers, D. G. (2011). The religion paradox: if religion makes people happy, why are so many dropping out? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(6), 1278–1290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dolan, P., Peasgood, T., & White, M. (2008). Do we really know what makes us happy? A review of the economic literature on the factors associated with subjective well-being. Journal of Economic Psychology, 29(1), 94–122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • EVS (2015). European Values Study Longitudinal Data File 1981–2008 (EVS 1981–2008). GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA4804 Data File Version 3.0.0 (2015-10-30), Doi:10.4232/1.12253.

  • Falk, A., Becker, A., Dohmen, T., Enke, B., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2018). Global Evidence on Economic Preferences. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(4), 1645–1692.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham, C., & Chattopadhyay, S. (2009). Well-being and public attitudes in Afghanistan. World Economy, 10(3), 105–146.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, C., & Crown, S. (2014). Religion and well-being around the world: Social purpose, social time, or social insurance? International Journal of Wellbeing, 4(1), 1–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gruber, J. H. (2005). Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You? The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy, 5(1).

  • Hayward, R. D., & Elliott, M. (2014). Cross-national analysis of the influence of cultural norms and government restrictions on the relationship between religion and well-being. Review of Religious Research, 56(1), 23–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helliwell, J. F. (2003). How’s life? Combining individual and national variables to explain subjective well-being. Economic Modelling, 20(2), 331–360.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Helliwell, J. F., Huang, H., & Wang, S. (2015). The geography of world happiness. In J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard, & J. Sachs (Eds.), World Happiness Report 2015 (pp. 12–41). New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helliwell, J. F., Huang, H., & Wang, S. (2017). The social foundations of world happiness. In J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard, & J. Sachs (Eds.), World Happiness Report 2017 (pp. 8–47). New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helliwell, J. F., Huang, H., & Wang, S. (2019). Changing World Happiness. In J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard, & J. Sachs (Eds.), World Happiness Report 2019 (pp. 11–46). New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Helliwell, J. F., & Wang, S. (2013). World happiness: Trends, explanations and distribution. In J. F. Helliwell, R. Layard, & J. Sachs (Eds.), World Happiness Report 2013 (pp. 8–37). New York: UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Inglehart, R., Foa, R., Peterson, C., & Welzel, C. (2008). Development, freedom, and rising happiness: A global perspective (1981–2007). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(4), 264–285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knack, S., & Keefer, P. (1997). Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(4), 1251–1288.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lim, C., & Putnam, R. D. (2010). Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction. American Sociological Review, 75(6), 914–933.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luhmann, M., Hofmann, W., Eid, M., & Lucas, R. E. (2012). Subjective well-being and adaptation to life events: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(3), 592–615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marzal, M. (2007). Popular religiosity. In G. Ritzer (Ed.), The Blackwell encyclopedia of sociology (pp. 3518–3525). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maselko, J., Hayward, R. D., Hanlon, A., Buka, S., & Meador, K. (2012). Religious service attendance and major depression: A case of reverse causality? American Journal of Epidemiology, 175(6), 576–583.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCullough, M. E., & Willoughby, B. L. B. (2009). Religion, self-regulation, and self-control: Associations, explanations, and implications. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 69–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mookerjee, R., & Beron, K. (2005). Gender, religion and happiness. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 34(5), 674–685.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2004). Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

  • Pew Research Center. (2017). The Changing Global Religious Landscape. Retrieved from https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/

  • Popova, O. (2014). Can religion insure against aggregate shocks to happiness? The case of transition countries. Journal of Comparative Economics, 42(3), 804–818.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pugno, M., & Verme, P. (2012). Life Satisfaction, Social Capital and Bonding-Bridging Nexus (Policy Research Working Paper No. 5945). The World Bank, Middle East and North Africa Region, Economic Policy, Poverty and Gender Unit.

  • Pustejovsky, J. (2019). clubSandwich: Cluster-Robust (Sandwich) Variance Estimators with Small-Sample Corrections. R package version 0.3.5.

  • R Core Team. (2018). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing (https://www.R-project.org).

  • Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. The American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ryan, R. M., Rigby, S., & King, K. (1993). Two types of religious internalization and their relations to religious orientations and mental health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(3), 586–596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sinding Bentzen, J. (2019). Acts of god? Religiosity and natural disasters across subnational world districts. The Economic Journal, 129(622), 2295–2321.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Somma, N. M., Bargsted, M. A., & Valenzuela, E. (2017). Mapping religious change in latin America. Latin American Politics and Society, 59(1), 119–142.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Statistical Service Republic of Cyprus. (2009). Demographic Report, 2008 (No. 46; Population Statistics, Series II).

  • World Bank (2018). World Development Indicators. Retrieved March 14, 2018, from https://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators

  • WVS (2015). World Value Survey 1981–2014 Longitudinal Aggregate v.20150418, 2015. World Values Survey Association (www.worldvaluessurvey.org). Aggregate File Producer: JDSystems, Madrid.

Download references

Acknowledgements

This study is part of the project: “Subjective Well-being and Human Development: Explaining the Latino American Paradox”. Authors want to acknowledge financial support provided by the University of Cantabria through the program: “Convocatoria Poyectos Emergentes UC—2016”

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cátedra de Cooperación Internacional y con Iberoamérica and Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Cantabria, Av. Los Castros SN, 39005, Santander, Spain

    Rafael Domínguez & Borja López-Noval

Authors
  1. Rafael Domínguez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Borja López-Noval
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Borja López-Noval.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (DOCX 92 kb)

Appendix

Appendix

see Table 7 and 8.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Domínguez, R., López-Noval, B. Religiosity and Life Satisfaction Across Countries: New Insights from the Self-Determination Theory. J Happiness Stud 22, 1165–1188 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00268-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00268-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation