Satan, the great motivator: The curious economic effects of religion!!
Is this data mining or a sign? ” They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies – and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.”
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Introduction (Via Boston.com)
What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.
Here’s one you might not have considered: hell.
A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies – and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.
Additional Excerpt (Via Boston.com)
That hell could matter to economic growth might seem surprising, since you can’t prove it exists, let alone quantify it. It stands as one of the more intriguing findings in a growing body of recent research exploring how religion might influence the wealth and prosperity of societies. In recent years, Italian economists have presented findings that religion can boost GDP by increasing trust within a society; researchers in the United States showed that religion reduces corruption and increases respect for law in ways that boost overall economic growth. A number of researchers have documented how merchants used religious backgrounds to establish one another’s reliability.
Favorite Excerpts (Via Boston.com)
In a sense, religion and economics long have been intertwined. There are more verses on money and finance in the Bible than there are verses on prayer. The New Testament stakes out clear if seemingly contradictory positions: on the one hand is the admonition that a rich person has little chance of getting into heaven; on the other is the parable of the talents, which praises the servant who got the biggest return on his money. Islam, to this day, outlaws the charging of interest; Buddhism instructs its followers to abjure desire for material goods.
So what is it about religion that creates these economic effects? On one level, the connection seems intuitive: All the major religions extol virtues like self-discipline, sacrifice, and thrift. Some even preach that earthly success translates to good things in the afterlife, a kind of gold-plated stairway to heaven. Religion can, quite directly, affect what you earn – fundamentalists and evangelicals in the United States tend to have lower savings rates and incomes than members of other religions, in part because they have larger families and give away more of their money.
If religious belief does have important effects on prosperity, it raises a difficult question for anyone concerned with economic development: What should we do with that knowledge? Does it make sense to put up religious billboards in struggling countries, or to appoint a minister of belief? Probably not. For one thing, religion is just one among many factors that affect economies. And for another, it seems to take a long time for religious shifts to catalyze economies. The Protestant work ethic may indeed have some economic importance, but the Industrial Revolution in Germany came 300 years after Martin Luther’s 95 theses. Many countries in the developing world shifted from ethnic religions to Christianity or Islam during the 20th century, and few miracles have so far occurred in those economies.
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