Gregory Chase

(West Liberty University, West Liberty, West Virginia, USA)

 

 

Abstract: Religion has a multitude of impacts on society and two of these aspects are the effect that religiosity and attendance of religious activities have on economic growth. Most past studies on these aspects of religion considered country to country comparisons and found increased levels of religiosity increased economic growth while more frequent attendance of religious activities decreased economic growth. This study extends the existing literature by considering the impact of religiosity on economics growth in just one nation, the United States. Using the level of religiosity and attendance of religious services by state, a model was constructed to evaluate the impact they have on economic growth in each state. Considering only the level of religiosity and attendance of religious services in each state, the results are similar to the studies considering these factors by nation. When control variables were added to the model to isolate their effects on economic growth, both of the religious variables became insignificant. However, the addition of the religious variables did increase the explanatory power of the overall model compared to excluding them from the model indicating they do provide some minimal additional explanatory power for economic growth in a state.

 

 

Key words: religiosity; attendance religious activities; economic growth; US states

 

JEL codes: O1, O5