Talk:Wealth and religion

Notability of this article?
Why is this notable enough for its own article? I think it could be a paragraph in articles on religion but its own?? (you might easily consider all kinds of X and Y combinations: Age and Religion, Power and Religion, Politics and Religion, Money and Religion, Weather and Religion that (even if researched) are not likely to be notable for their own article. Arnoutf (talk) 09:12, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In general I thought it would be a good idea to have it as an independent article in order not to make the religion article too long, but I don't have strong preferences about this, so I am not opposed to moving the information into another article, as long as the information is not deleted. NerdyNSK (talk) 02:33, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Also note that I actually do believe that the topic is notable because of academic research on it. Also see Religion and happiness, another topic which I also find notable because of research.  I think that all topics that have attracted the interest of researchers are notable, and I think that articles like this will likely grow to full articles quickly. NerdyNSK (talk) 07:42, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The content in the article is certainly notable. In fact, the article could be greatly expanded as there has been a lot written about it. Right now, it might not seem to need its own article. However, after a bit of expansion, it just might. There are also some interesting plots one could make showing the relationship (see: http://gapminder.org/). Thorwald (talk) 03:47, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this article should be called Income and Religion, since it primarily looks at income, not wealth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.103.173.209 (talk) 20:28, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Agreed income and religion makes more sense as income and wealth are not necessarily correlated The Theory of Knowledge (talk) 21:47, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Inaccurate graphic chart
Self made graphic, picked up by other wiki pages, doesn't have citation, and could be seen as anti-semetic. Seems biased.

Religion and inequality
I think part of this article should focus on purported links between religion and economic inequality, i.e. the primarily marxist idea that religion exploits social inequalities between rich and poor or men and women in order to foster greater social control on its part. This historic criticism of religion is somewhat close to the opium of the people view, in that it imples that countries that are more religious (Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, etc) will naturally perpetuate inequality in order to maintain the old patriarchal and mercantile regime on which the social order is founded. ADM (talk) 00:31, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Citation for wealth and atheism section
Hi, I would like to see some reference for the following statements "Though it is possible that its due the fact that those countries that allow the opportunity to gain an education, personal wealth, and intellectual resources are those selfsame countries that allow the freedom of the personal thought, which leads to a certain degree of atheism within that society." Is this from some study that shows that freedom of personal thought, educational attainment, etc. leads to increased atheism, or decline in religious activity? If so, could you please cite it? Also, the following statements need citation: "However, in countries where atheism was mandatory, there was not great personal economic wealth (e.g., communist countries, due to redistribution of wealth by Communist ideology)". Thanks. Arnob (talk) 05:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I put a "dubious" tag after the sentence, "It is of note that many of these affluent countries were founded on Age of Enlightenment-era, Judeo-Christian principles of equality, free thought, enterprise, religion, press, etc," because the citation does not appear to confirm that freedom of the press or freedom of religion are necessarily Judeo-Christian principles. Bias exists in this sentence. RugTimXII (talk) 22:01, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

This article needs serious attention
This is one of the worst articles I have ever read on Wikipedia, we really ought to fix this one up 207.216.33.144 (talk) 10:30, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with this opinion. For example, the comment: "Specifically it has been shown that affluent countries are mainly those whose populations do not believe in any god.[4][5]" is nonsense.  While some percentage of affluent countries may not believe in any god, this percentage is uniformly smaller than those who do believe.24.13.34.10 (talk) 13:46, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Did you check the two sources? You need sources to back up that opinion before it's placed in the article. Jess talk cs 15:26, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Offer to join article to another one
I coucur with the above opinions: the article is terrible. However, I think there is an important statistics in it and must not be deleted. Hence, I offer to join this article to the Demographics of atheism. Especially, mentioned article has a section called Income distribution, with link to this article. That would be the best solution. 46.71.203.2 (talk) 20:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If you would like to improve this page, or to add information from Demographics of atheism into this page, then I'd say, go for it! (But I don't want to WP:Merge the two articles into a single article.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Reverted to months old version
No reason provided for these massive removal of cited content- and any speculations like "While the Episcopalians tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups in Americans" are irrelevant because they we are talking about wealth only.

Also I have removed other texts that have used christianpost as citation. Bladesmulti (talk) 12:00, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protection
I've semi'd the article due to a number of problematic edits like blanking and reposting of copyright violations. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   09:12, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Migheli's comment on this article
Dr. Migheli has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

""The correlation between wealth and religion has been subject to academic research. Wealth is the status of being the beneficiary or proprietor of a large accumulation of capital and economic power. Religion is a cultural system that often involves belief in supernatural forces and may intend to provide a moral system or a meaning of life.

The GDP of countries generally correlates negatively with their religiosity, i.e. the wealthier a population is the more secular it is.[2]"

As the reader may notice, the article is contradictory. On the one side, the author(s) correctly define wealth. On the other side, they focus their article on the correlation between income and religion. While there is positive correlation between wealth and income, these two concepts are completely different from an economics point of view. Therefore the title of the article is wrong and misleading. I suggest that the article is removed from Wikipedia untill its title is changed into "Income and religion"."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Migheli has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Migheli, Matteo, 2009. "Sharing the pie: the Lutheran is neither opportunistic nor generous," POLIS Working Papers 133, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:16, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Figure is wrong, and its source unavailable
The Figure showing the correlation between Religiosity and Purchasing power does not correspond to its caption: the linked "national levels of religiosity" page gives a completely different religiosity ranking, e.g. the Netherlands is at 33% and Turkey at 82% whereas in the Figure Netherlands appears at 40% and Turkey at 20%. Furthermore, it cites a WIN-Gallup. "Global Index of religion and atheism" report which is no longer available and I could not find anywhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blanutz (talk • contribs) 14:33, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Secular = secu-rity
"The GDP of countries generally correlates negatively with their religiosity, i.e. the wealthier a population is the more secular it is.[2]"

USA is Christian, a Common Law, Torah based, jurisdiction.

The very foundation of the State, which allows for religious freedom, is however based on the original Israeli Republic as recorded in the Bible.

UK is Christian. As are all other Common Law practicing nations.

Further, we must take into account the contribution religious individuals and religious institutions played in forming truly atheist societies such as France, which untill 1800 AD, was a very Christian country, the secular Republic today simply wouldn't exist without that heritage.. We have to take into account the majority population and their religious organization, aswell as that of their ancestors when categorizing a nation as "religious" or "secular"

If secular means any nation not a full blown thrice act, then of course, secular nations are wealthiest!

But if secular specifically, and definetely, means a nation that has no religious majority in its make up, then nations such as China fit in nicely in that category. But not much else.

Secular means "security", as in, a state government that concerns itself exclusively with the reduction of security risk/threat... So it shouldn't even be used as shirt hand for "non-religious", for the Communist state previously mentioned wouldn't even classify as secular, Socialism is concerned with much more than mere security, secularity; social Equality, gender Equality, wealth Redistribution etc.

Just get rid of whole paragraph.

You can't name a single secular state on 5he planet, everyone one of them is a social engineering molestor of its population.

If only we had secular states, governments that simply did what we pay them for, protect life, liberty and property and stay out of my business, got a problem, sue me, I'll see ya in court!

If only...

Also, Saudia Arabia?

C'mon, religious nations far more wealthier than non-religious. The only non-religious states are socialist, and they don't have any any wealth! It's all owned by the State, which is no one, and bound for bankruptcy and collapse. China exist on the slave Labour of its own citizens, that isn't wealth.

Church of Britain (talk) 11:07, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

This is a ridiculous statement, certainly not a coherent argument and fundamentally unsupportable, with too many flaws in reasoning to support any accidental accuracies as representative of broader truths. This is in relation to any and all statements made in this ridiculous entry. The Theory of Knowledge (talk) 19:39, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Outdated Income Chart
This table is two decades out of date. I propose a more recent version possibly from Pew Research Center - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/ 89.65.67.45 (talk) 13:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Which table? Income ranking? --Rice not spice (talk) 13:12, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * PS. Seeing the source you have provided, I agree with you. --Rice not spice (talk) 13:13, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

US Data
Before I raise an objection, I'd like to state upfront that one, I'm not a racist; two, I believe there are systemic race-based inequalities in the United States; and three, I believe that separating US groups based on religion "and" race can help us expose and address these differences.

With that being said, it is almost certainly the case that treating religious denominations as unified demographics leads to distortions in the data. For example, Hispanics comprise the largest share of American Catholics, but they also happen to have the lowest levels of income. If Catholics are at the national average when Asian, white, and Hispanic Catholics are all grouped together, it stands to reason that either Asian Catholics, white Catholics, or both Asian and white Catholics have remarkably high levels of income.

Unfortunately Pew Research almost never divides religious groups on race. They did so once, to my knowledge, but the results have been suspiciously removed from their website. Fortunately this site below saved the chart, which you can view about halfway down the page.

As we can see, both white Catholics and Asian Catholics have more members earning $100,000 or more in income than white mainline Protestants. Another thing that jumps out at me is Asian mainline Protestants, who are ranked higher in the income distribution than Asian Catholic, white Catholics and, of course, white mainline Protestants.

So just who are these "Episcopalians" who have such high income levels? Are they white Episcopalians, as most people assume? Or are they more like Asian converts to the Episcopal Church and converts from other ethnic/racial groups? The answer to this question may have game-changing implications in the study of religion, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomics in the US.Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:58, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Statistics -> Global
Both paragraphs are based on the same research. The research per se was conducted by New World Wealth and published in Jan of 2015. The organization was founded in 2013. This research is no more available on their web-site - Reports. And after looking into their other reports I don't think they are of high quality. --Igor Yalovecky (talk) 14:34, 6 September 2022 (UTC)