Notes From Off Center - Latest Comments in The Effect of Religion on Wealth Inequality

Re: The Effect of Religion on Wealth Inequality

jprapp — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:39:08 -0000

Responses to the body of the study seriatim.

The title - “Conservative Protestants and Wealth: How Religion Perpetuates Asset Poverty”

The title is profoundly misleading and inappropriately sensational without understanding the author's methodological caveats qualifying her “findings” as hardly more than framing heuristics for further, more closely correlated studies. I’d certainly temper my judgment of sensationalism to make it more benign if titles like these generated more grant funding from the National Institutes on Health (National Institute on Aging and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) to promote sociological studies in the US toward a closer match to European social medicine oriented models of “empirical” theology, where theology can be correlated to health or quality of life questions. The sensational component of the title to general readers untrained in sociological metrics is the suggestion that religion “perpetuates” asset “poverty.” For, why this title is misleadingly sensational except possibly as terms of art to sociologists, see passim below.

To dispatch the title summarily;

1. “Perpetuation”

While one underlying data set (National Longitudinal Survey of Youth) is sufficiently longitudinal to identify a “perpetuation” of poverty, the second data set (Economic Values Survey) seems at best to support secondary product-moment predictions of relative values (Wuthnow survey of religious scholars), using survey-feedback interviews by Gallup directed to the adult labor force identified by the 1990 census data. The correlation between these two data sets is heuristic and not scientific in finding shared religious “values” between the two sets. This approach is fine for framing further studies. But, the key problem with the notion of “perpetuation” (with religion “perpetuating” poverty) is that since the correlations between the data sets is heuristic, the author admits: “these data do not allow me to distinguish is whether CPs (conservative Protestants) have unique values because they are religiously conservative or because they accept the principles that CP churches promote.”

Thud.

What’s the difference between “religiously conservative” versus “the principles that CP churches promote”?

The author first draws a near tautology between the two (religious conservatives, and, principles in CP churches) via her heuristic association of the two data sets, but then, she re-introduces this distinction between them. This is either extremely poor science writing, nearly disingenuous, or a way to signal the National Institutes on Health of the need for further grants to study this question.

The real question is whether adherents affiliate as CP’s because the totality of their class factors makes them feel at home with the “the principles that CP churches promote”?

The author concedes that “class” is an amorphous concept and that religious conservatism is derivative of class. There’s nothing wrong with framing “religious conservatism” or ““the principles that CP churches promote” by articulating scales to identify these values, and then to do longitudinal studies to see if religious values really do “perpetuate,” that is, propagate vectors of effects that cause poverty.

But, that’s not done here.

One economical approach would be to examine existing data sets on behaviors like denomination-switching, or data sets identifying relational values in different religious families (e.g., “Readiness for Ministry” sociological data set on differential relational values that various church families expect of clergy) – to learn whether other “class” factors outweigh religious convictions, and whether religious convictions are anything more than trivial (vanishingly small) considerations in affiliating in CP families in the first place.

Lastly, on the “perpetuates” (religion perpetuates poverty) thematic, the author says: “While I did not study inequality directly, my findings do suggest that if CPs—a large segment of the American population—began to accumulate wealth more like other groups, we might find that wealth inequality would be reduced.”

Nonsense.

If CP's accumulated wealth like other groups, then there’s no reason why they wouldn’t switch out of CP's affiliations, and all become Episcopalians (okay, this is low-brow humor; but, get the point). Or go to work for the agnostic Popperian (Karl Popper) George Soros, doing international currency trading (okay, this is high-brow humor: it teases the border between religious faith and agnosticism).

2. “Poverty”

The notion of “wealth inequality” is loaded term and tied to the sociological definition of “poverty,” which I hope to address in a later post. Suffice it to say that “poverty” here is not what many popular readers might think, nor is it tied to federal clearinghouse standards of poverty (like those used to define indigent status for poverty law and social services).

Back to work for now (I don’t really have time for this: it’s just so close to home)

Jim

Re: The Effect of Religion on Wealth Inequality

Drew Tatusko — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:59:31 -0000

I need to re-read it again, but the author did perform a regression to see if religion is a predictor of wealth. It can predict a given socioeconomic status, but any regressive analysis can indicate different sources of causation. What is clear is that religion does not cause wealth, but maintains a given wealth status.

As you indicate Paul, this cause can work the other way around. I think that this is one area that the study points for more research. But it is true that socioeconomic status or class does have an effect. The paper indicates that this was controlled for, but I am not clear yet if that was tested in a model that looked at the regression from both directions. I have to read the modeling again (always the driest part of a good study right?)!

And as Jim indicates, now that there is evidence of a clear relationship and a clear type of relationship between religious belief and wealth status, there is now great opportunity to run more tests on both these data sets and to reproduce the study controlling for different variances. I think the author points us in some very fruitful directions in the discussion at the end of the paper.

Re: The Effect of Religion on Wealth Inequality

Paul — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:40:18 -0000

I echo the appreciation of the post -- very interesting. My first reaction to reading this is bent toward the causation point that you bring up. Perhaps it is reversed and socio-economic status causes more conservative religious belief? This might be indicated by the fact that people who were born CP's and people who are apostates both show similar patterns...

Re: The Effect of Religion on Wealth Inequality

Looney — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:47:44 -0000

I will need to take some time and read the study. It seems a bit peculiar at the moment, but I have no doubt that there are interesting insights. I have always understood that the number one factor in poverty is family instability. The US as a whole also has one of the worst savings rates in the world, but this has usually been attributed to a taxation system which punishes savings and enthusiasm for debt. Perhaps I will need to adjust my stereotypes ...

Re: The Effect of Religion on Wealth Inequality

carol howard merritt — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:40:41 -0000

Thanks, Drew. This is so interesting. I look forward to reading your further thoughts on it.

I write about the inequities a little bit in my book. I concluded that it's partly from our mission/evangelism efforts.

There's certainly an attitude in the mainline church that I didn't sense in my conservative background--we're expected to have our financial portfolio in good order before we enter the doors. And our evangelism efforts are often focused on people who look like us.

In mainline churches, we don't proselytize when we help people. We don't pressure them to convert so they can eat.

But, in conservative churches, they see feeding the body as a means to feeding the soul. In my opinion, this is deplorable. But, in effect, CPs invite the poor to be in their midst. They welcome the opportunity worship alongside the people they feed.

Re: The Effect of Religion on Wealth Inequality

jprapp — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:31:04 -0000

Very nice analysis of press release botch-jobs on the actual findings. Composing scalars for theological convictions can be notoriously difficult, and to the extent that the study relied on self-report, I wonder whether respondents were sufficiently sophisticated (or primed) to distinguish non-theological motives for not saving, like ambient feelings of altruism that otherwise would prompt self-giving (non-saving) behaviors no matter which theology tickled the system. Since this study is preliminary and ungrounded in a corpus of collateral studies, I’d like to see whether prosperity-doctrine teachings repeated at Pavlovian increments (sorry for the sinister sarcasm) result in larger investment or savings patterns. And whether emotive or putative altruistic rewards by God to either side (poor or prosperous) really vary in substance, beyond simple ecological heuristics like, “well, gee, God said.” How stable are these traits across spectrums of ecological pressure?

Jim