Does Religiosity Promote or Discourage Social Trust? Evidence from Cross-Country and Cross-State Comparisons

49 Pages Posted: 26 Sep 2009 Last revised: 13 Nov 2009

See all articles by Niclas Berggren

Niclas Berggren

Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN); University of Economics, Prague - Faculty of Economics and Public Administration

Christian Bjørnskov

Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business; Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN); Center for Political Studies; Institute for Corruption Studies

Date Written: October 10, 2009

Abstract

We look at the effect of religiosity on social trust, defined as the share of a population that thinks that people in general can be trusted. This is important since social trust is related to many desired outcomes, such as growth, education, democratic stability and subjective well-being. The effect of religiosity is theoretically unclear: while all major religions call for behaving well to others, religious groups may primarily trust people in their own groups and distrust others, as well as cause division in the broader population. We make use of new data from the Gallup World Poll for 105 countries and the U.S. states, measuring religiosity by the share of the population that answers yes to the question “Is religion an important part of your daily life?”. Our empirical results, making use of regression analysis whereby we control for other possible determinants of social trust and, by using instrumental variables, for the risk of reverse causality, indicate a robust, negative effect of religiosity, both internationally and within the US. When interacting religiosity with the degree of religious fractionalization, we find that the negative effect occurs above a rather low threshold level of fractionalization, where it increases monotonically, in line with our theoretical prediction.

Keywords: trust, religiosity, religion, social capital

JEL Classification: O57, Z12, Z13

Suggested Citation

Berggren, Niclas and Bjørnskov, Christian, Does Religiosity Promote or Discourage Social Trust? Evidence from Cross-Country and Cross-State Comparisons (October 10, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1478445 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1478445

Niclas Berggren

Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) ( email )

Box 55665
Grevgatan 34, 2nd floor
Stockholm, SE-102 15
Sweden

HOME PAGE: http://www.ifn.se/nb

University of Economics, Prague - Faculty of Economics and Public Administration ( email )

nám. W. Churchilla 4
Praha, 130 67
Czech Republic

Christian Bjørnskov (Contact Author)

Aarhus University - Department of Economics and Business ( email )

Fuglesangs Allé 4
Aarhus V, DK-8210
Denmark

Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) ( email )

Box 55665
Grevgatan 34, 2nd floor
Stockholm, SE-102 15
Sweden

Center for Political Studies

Landgreven 3
Copenhagen K, DK-1301
Denmark

Institute for Corruption Studies

Stevenson Hall 425
Normal, IL 61790-4200
United States

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