New research measuring the importance of religion in 109 countries spanning the entire 20th century has reignited an age-old debate around the link between secularisation and economic growth. The study, published in Science Advances, has shown that a decline in religion influences a country's future economic prosperity.
While it is well documented that rich countries tend to be secular whilst poor countries tend to be religious, it is still unclear if secularisation causes wealth or the other way around?
The subject has long been debated by classic scholars of social science including French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who claimed that religion fades away once economic development has satisfied our material needs, whereas German sociologist Max Weber, argued that changes in religion drive economic productivity. The debate continues to this day.
Researchers from the Universities of Bristol (UK) and Tennessee (US) used data from birth cohorts from the World Values Survey to get a measure of the importance of religion spanning the entire 20th century (1900 to 2000).
The findings revealed that secularisation precedes economic development and not the other way around. Although this does not demonstrate a causal pathway, it does rule out the reverse.
Furthermore, the findings show that secularisation only predicts future economic development when it is accompanied by a respect and tolerance for individual rights. Countries where abortion, divorce and homosexuality are tolerated have a greater chance of future economic prosperity.
Damian Ruck, the study's lead researcher in the University of Bristol Medical School: Population Health Sciences, said: "Our findings show that secularisation precedes economic development and not the other way around. However, we suspect the relationship is not directly causal. We noticed that secularisation only leads to economic development when it is accompanied by a greater respect for individual rights.
"Very often secularisation is indeed accompanied by a greater tolerance of homosexuality, abortion, divorce etc. But that isn’t to say that religious countries can’t become prosperous. Religious institutions need to find their own way of modernising and respecting the rights of individuals."
Alex Bentley from the University of Tennessee, added: "Over the course of the 20th century, changes in importance of religious practices appear to have predicted changes in GDP across the world. This doesn't necessarily mean that secularisation caused economic development, since both changes could have been caused by some third factor with different time lags, but at least we can rule out economic growth as the cause of secularisation in the past."
The study was funded by grants from the Wellcome Trust and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
'Religious change preceded economic change in the 20th century' by Damian Ruck, R. Alexander Bentley and Daniel J. Lawson in Science Advances
TonsOfGains on July 19th, 2018 at 16:44 UTC »
Economist by education and trade (quant analyst) here. As others have noted, the lead researcher explicitly stated that the relationship is not causal and mentioned the importance of individual rights and freedoms as a factor. The comments attacking the clickbait title seem to take some offense to the secularism portion.
However, it is important to note that a strong correlation between two things suggests that there are shared causal factors. It is ridiculously improbable for correlations to occur between completely unrelated things, especially when given a substantial window of data. In other words, the distinction doesn't matter as the fact is; secularism precedes/predicts economic growth.
I'd further note that the stress on individual rights and freedoms is likely for clearer interpretation of the research as, without such a note, data from unsuccessful centralized governments and economies may increase spuriousness.
In regards to comments stating that Western economic growth began at a time where people were still religious:
Preceding secularism is the liberalization of the governing/educated class. This has already began in the Middle East, where the governing/upper class often feigns religious devotion. Yes, Europeans were still very religious during the colonial era. However, the wealthy and educated had begun to indulge in things prohibited by the church in a much more open manner than during the Middle Ages. People also began to look to science rather than take the word of the church and Bible as the one truth. Most importantly, religion no longer had absolute dictation of the law - which is secularism. Drifting away from something like religion doesn't happen overnight.
Lopsided123 on July 19th, 2018 at 15:11 UTC »
I wonder if they would have gotten other results if they looked at different time periods?
Al89nut on July 19th, 2018 at 15:11 UTC »
Does an increase in prosperity predict a decline in religion?