Relationship Between Economic Wealth and Atheism? An Analysis
I have been asked this question as a solver on Starmind.com, and find it an interesting study to see if there is a relationship between economic wealth and athiesm in the world’s economies.
The results could call for a discussion from philosophers out there. First I will conduct a study, discuss the limitations of the study and evaluate if there is a relationship.
Definition: For Economic wealth I will use GDP per capita(although it is a ‘flow’ concept). I can extract athiesm directly.
What Is The Relationship?
I will use a large enough source of world economies, 57, for my study. I will then use a Spearman rank correlation on the sets of data.
Finding: I have found a positive correlation between incomes and non believers. It seems that on average, the more religious countries are the least wealthy and vice versa.
Correlation = +0.375
See my table of data here. It took a lot longer without Microsoft Excel, which is temporarily unavailable on my PC!
| Country | GDP Per Head PPP US $ | Rank | Difference Squared | % Atheist/ Agnostic/ Nonbeliever in God |
|
| Sweden | 51950 | 7 | 36 | 1 | 46 – 85% |
| Vietnam | 1051 | 50 | 2304 | 2 | 81% |
| Denmark | 62118 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 43 – 80% |
| Norway | 94758 | 1 | 9 | 4 | 31 – 72% |
| Japan | 38454 | 18 | 169 | 5 | 64 – 65% |
| Czech Republic | 20672 | 26 | 400 | 6 | 54 – 61% |
| Finland | 51323 | 6 | 1 | 7 | 28 – 60% |
| France | 44507 | 14 | 36 | 8 | 43 – 54% |
| South Korea | 19114 | 27 | 324 | 9 | 30 – 52% |
| Estonia | 17454 | 29 | 361 | 10 | 49% |
| Germany | 44446 | 15 | 16 | 11 | 41 – 49% |
| Russia | 11831 | 34 | 484 | 12 | 24 – 48% |
| Hungary | 15408 | 31 | 324 | 13 | 32 – 46% |
| Netherlands | 52962 | 4 | 100 | 14 | 39 – 44% |
| Britain | 43541 | 16 | 1 | 15 | 31 – 44% |
| Belgium | 47084 | 11 | 25 | 16 | 42 – 43% |
| Bulgaria | 6545 | 38 | 484 | 17 | 34 – 40% |
| Slovenia | 27018 | 24 | 36 | 18 | 35 – 38% |
| Israel | 27651 | 23 | 16 | 19 | 15 – 37% |
| Canada | 45069 | 13 | 49 | 20 | 19 – 30% |
| Latvia | 14908 | 32 | 121 | 21 | 20 – 29% |
| Slovakia | 18211 | 28 | 36 | 22 | 10 – 28% |
| Switzerland | 64326 | 2 | 441 | 23 | 17 – 27% |
| Austria | 49599 | 8 | 256 | 24 | 18 – 26% |
| Australia | 47369 | 10 | 225 | 25 | 24 – 25% |
| Spain | 35214 | 20 | 36 | 26 | 15 – 24% |
| Iceland | 52478 | 5 | 484 | 27 | 16 – 23% |
| New Zealand | 30438 | 22 | 36 | 28 | 20 – 22% |
| Ukraine | 3898 | 42 | 169 | 29 | 20% |
| Belarus | 6230 | 39 | 81 | 30 | 17% |
| Greece | 31669 | 21 | 100 | 31 | 16% |
| Italy | 38492 | 17 | 225 | 32 | 6 – 15% |
| Armenia | 3872 | 43 | 100 | 33 | 14% |
| China | 3266 | 44 | 100 | 34 | 8 – 14%* |
| Lithuania | 14097 | 33 | 4 | 35 | 13% |
| Singapore | 37597 | 19 | 361 | 36 | 13% |
| Uruguay | 9653 | 35 | 4 | 37 | 12% |
| Kazakhstan | 8513 | 36 | 4 | 38 | 11 – 12% |
| Mongolia | 1990 | 48= | 81 | 39 | 9% |
| Portugal | 22922 | 25 | 225 | 40 | 4 – 9% |
| USA | 47988 | 9 | 1024 | 41 | 3 – 9% |
| Albania | 3911 | 41 | 1 | 42 | 8% |
| Argentina | 8235 | 37 | 36 | 43 | 4 – 8% |
| Kyrgyzstan | 958 | 52 | 64 | 44 | 7% |
| Dominican Republic | 4575 | 40 | 25 | 45 | 7% |
| Croatia | 15636 | 30 | 256 | 46 | 7% |
| Sri Lanka | 2012 | 47 | 0 | 47 | 2% |
| Indonesia | 2246 | 46 | 4 | 48 | 2% |
| Congo | 181 | 56 | 49 | 49 | 2% |
| Sierra Leone | 351 | 54 | 16 | 50 | 2% |
| Malawi | 287 | 55 | 16 | 51 | 2% |
| Senegal | 1086 | 49 | 9 | 52 | 2% |
| Djibouti | 1029 | 51 | 4 | 53 | 2% |
| Morocco | 2768 | 45 | 81 | 54 | 2% |
| United Arab Emirates | 45530 | 12 | 1849 | 55 | 2% |
| Bangladesh | 497 | 53 | 9 | 56 | 1% |
| Egypt | 1990 | 48= | 81 | 57 | 0% |
| 11588 |
Sources for GDP are from World Bank 2010 Data on Google http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_pcap_cd&idim=country:GBR&dl=en&hl=en&q=gdp+per+capita
Source for Atheism by Percentage Taken from 2005 Data http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html for 47 Countries
and http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/02/18/poorest-countries-are-the-most-religious/ for
Spearmans Formula=
(6xSum of Ranking Differences Squared)/n^3-n
Possible Methods of A Closer Analysis
Although I found a correlation there may be ways I could deepen the study.
More Data Sets: I took 57 data sets, but I could not find many secondary sources of atheism in population, leaving me to extract the 50 most atheist and 10 least economies, possibly not a random enough source.
Dates of Record: Religion by country data was sourced from 2005, GDP per Capita 2010. Fortunately, religious beliefs of a population barely change over 5 years, leaving the data good for comparison.
Cause, Effect or Parameter?
The study showing a small correlation can generalise that lower income economies are more religious and vice versa, with of course some deviation from that trend e.g Qatar, U.A.E/ This cannot prove nor is it likely that one variable is the cause of the other. The source of the relaionship is speculative.
The correlation’s reason remains open to philosophers!
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