8 - A Truly Complex Relationship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
I acknowledged at the start of this book that the relationship between religion and material well-being is complex, and that it is challenging to describe it completely. One issue that contributes to the difficulty is data limitations. Modern data is certainly far superior to the data that early social scientists used to explore the effects of religion on attainment and other intermediary processes, yet modern data are not perfect. Often we have strong empirical evidence that part of a causal chain holds, but no empirical evidence to support another part of that same chain, making it difficult to show that the chain is valid. For example, in the first part of this chapter, I discuss religiosity. There is reliable empirical evidence that the strength of a person's religious convictions is at times more important than religious affiliation in accurately predicting some of the family processes that affect wealth attainment. However, modern data do not allow us to connect religiosity with both family processes and attainment outcomes, making it difficult to say with confidence whether there is a connection between these processes.
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- Information
- Faith and MoneyHow Religion Contributes to Wealth and Poverty, pp. 189 - 211Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011