The Influence of Religion on Economic Attitudes Over Time

This study examines the influence of religion on economic attitudes over time. To do this, it focuses on how the impact changes without camouflaging the effect of religious beliefs and practices. It partially adopts the approach by Guiso et al. (2003) to test the enduring importance of religion and then extended to capture its influence over time–using OLS and Panel regression models. An “Integrated Values Surveys 1981-2014” data set from both the World Values Survey (WVS) and the European Values Survey (EVS) is employed in the study, using the latest available waves. Over time, I find that religion remains significant and statistically correlated to the development of institutions favorable for economic growth. Although these effects vary across different religious denominations, however, none of them seems to be an impediment to the development of government institutions, and for the most part a free market economy. Further analysis reveals that religious belief, irrespective of service attendance, appears to be an important measure of religiosity, and excluding its effect from the study of religion seems to conceal much of its influence on people’s attitudes. Religious people tend to exhibit more positive economic attitudes than atheists, and these effects are virtually significant across categories, even if we focus on how they differ over time. However, religious people seem to be less concern about market competition but are more likely to support its fairness. For some religions, these effects tend to remain constant over time, while for others, there are significant changes across denominations. Another key observation is that conservative attitudes toward women for almost all religions tend to be weakening, moving one year in time, compared to the result reported by Guiso et al. (2003). But this effect is however opposite regarding women’s right to education and roles as housewives, where nearly all religions are becoming far more conservative over time. Perhaps not surprising also, all religions are becoming far more trustful of the government, the police, the army and the justice systems, although their attitudes toward strangers and people of other races seem to be moving in opposite direction. Therefore, contrary to conventional wisdom on the persistence of cultural traits on economic outcomes, this study provides one of the newest evidence that religious values and preferences are susceptible to changes over time, and that these effects are observable between generations, moving 33 years up, from 1981 to 2014. Master's Thesi