Understanding the Socioeconomic Determinants of Religiosity and Religious Participation in Asia

Abstract

While there has been much research on the effect of religiosity on physical and mental health, the socioeconomic determinants of religiosity are not well understood. Using data from different waves of the World Values Survey, this paper analyzes the socioeconomic patterns and determinants of religiosity in nine Asian countries—China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The analysis suggests that religiosity varies significantly with age and sex, as well as with relative income, absolute income, socioeconomic status, education, and employment status. There are large differences in “innate” religiosity across the nine countries even after controlling for these socioeconomic characteristics. The results thus suggest that some of the widely observed effects of religiosity on health in the literature may simply reflect the associations of religiosity with background variables like education and socioeconomic status.