Attending religious services may enrich the soul, but it also fattens the wallet, according to research released on Tuesday."Doubling the frequency of attendance leads to a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale," Jonathan Gruber of the economics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his study.
Gruber explains his finding by suggesting that, "[t]hose with more faith may be less 'stressed out' about daily problems that impede success in the labor market and the marriage market, and therefore are more successful". Another likely explanation is that churchgoers are embedded in social networks that facilitate economic opportunity. Of course, the faithful (particularly those of a Calvinist bent) might attribute the wealth-enhancing effect of churchgoing to divine intervention. But that hypothesis is unlikely to find much empirical support.
Post a Comment