Abstract
Previous research suggests that greater religiosity is associated with higher levels of overall life satisfaction. However, previous research has focused primarily on Christian populations, and few have specifically analyzed Muslim populations. We examine the association between religiosity and overall life satisfaction in a Muslim population, controlling for demographic variables, socio-economic characteristics and self-rated health. Unlike most previous studies, we use a relatively large random sample of more than 17,000 individuals, which was obtained from the Israel Social Survey in the years 2002–2020. Our results show that greater religiosity is associated with higher levels of overall life satisfaction among Muslims.
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Notes
The final statistical model included self-rated health as a covariate, even though there may be reverse causality between life satisfaction and morbidity (e.g., Steptoe, 2019). However, Liu et al. (2016) have shown that happiness does not have a direct effect on mortality, after adding proper controls, raising doubts about reverse causality between life satisfaction and morbidity.
They note that their results are robust to estimation using ordered logit regression.
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Funding
The research was supported by a grant (No. 1909/19) from the Israel Science Foundation, administered by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, for a research project entitled “Lifestyle differences across ethnic, religious and religiosity groups in Israel: Variations in consumption, employment and life satisfaction.”
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Schellekens, J.J., Okun, B. Religiosity and Overall Life Satisfaction: Muslim Arabs in Israel. J Relig Health (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-023-01937-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-023-01937-x