The effect of religiousness on social economic cohesion

University of Amsterdam

Bachelor Thesis

The effect of religiousness on social

economic cohesion

Author: Supervisor:

Julija Galimulina Jindi Zheng

10368426

2

Statement of Originality

This document is written by Julija Galimulina, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

3 Abstract

The question of how religiousness affects individual economic activity and particularly socially-oriented economic transactions does not appear to have been covered extensively in the literature. However, one’s religion would naturally appear to be an important factor affecting social economic cohesion. In this work, the focus is on the impact of religiousness on altruism, exemplified by charitable activity. The study considers how the level of religious affiliation affects charitable activities in the United States. The results suggest that there is likely a positive relationship present between those two parameters.

Introduction

In modern academia, the issue of religiousness is addressed fairly frequently from different perspectives of inquiry. However, it appears that the predominant focus is on following the trend of how the realities of modern-day world. That is, a substantial proportion of the existing research tends to focus on the impact of the current economic environment on religious practices and affiliations. Even though such approach certainly carries its merit, the premise behind this work is that studying the reverse relationship might be of a greater practical usage. This is likely to also hold true when it comes to the relation between religious affiliation and economic behaviour. Given a broad set of possible moral influences, it is likely that religious commitment is likely to have an impact on economic decision-making. In this work, the focus is on the relationship between religiousness and selfless economic behaviour, namely, charitable activity. The idea is to test the hypothesis whether there is a relationship between the level of religious commitment and the extent to which one engages in charitable activity. The hypothesis is tested on the level of individual US states. The idea is to test whether there is a link between a state’s religious involvement and the propensity of its inhabitants to engage in charitable activity.

Religious practices and affiliations cater to a lot of socio-cultural components that may be influential or even decisive in decision-making of an individual. Moral convictions and inner consistency with a set of principles laid out by religious canons have indeed had a major impact on the turn of historical events. It appears, however, that the issue remains somewhat neglected in the economic discipline. Understandably, there are certain considerations and constraints that present society imposes with regards to judgement of one’s religious affiliation. Most significantly, one’s religion is often approached as background information about an individual that should not influence outside judgement. Quite naturally, there is a rationale in this when it comes to judging a specific individual.

However, the situation is less unambiguous when it comes to behavioural trends in societies. Firstly, religion is often closely linked in eyes of an observer with someone’s ethnicity, more specifically, with ethnical origin as opposed to

4

upbringing and cultural background. While it is reasonable to assume that solely someone’s ethnical background is not in itself a decisive factor to determine their behaviour, it does not necessarily have to hold for one’s religious affiliations. As mentioned above, religion is a set of moral guidelines and imperatives that tend to be rather broad and can, thereby, have an effect on a rather broad array of human decisions. Furthermore, from a statistical perspective, what does not necessarily need to hold true for a particular individual, might nonetheless be spotted in trends when it comes to larger groups that share a common characteristic.

The basic economic predicament that lies behind the idea of this work can be described is follows. Multiple prominent experimental studies in Behavioural Economics have shown that an individual’s behaviour tends to become more selfish once the fear of retribution or confrontation is incrementally reduced in a particular setting. One of the most common examples is the outcomes of the dictatorial game and its relation to the level of involvement between two players. There is a possibility to make a parallel between these intrinsic punishments and confrontations and the moral dilemma that is experienced by someone who is religiously involved. For them, there is a possibility (or frequently, an inevitability) of eventual retribution for mistreating other individuals. Therefore, under equivalent circumstances, they may have an additional disincentive to mistreat someone or behave entirely selfishly as opposed to someone who is entirely removed from that idea. To illustrate the argument, in absence of criminal persecution or societal ostracising, for someone religiously involved, there still remains a possibility of divine retribution. Therefore, it could be sensible that under similar circumstances, they make experience a greater degree of uncertainty with regards to behaving entirely in their own interest.

Extending the described parallel, one can in this setting distinguish between self-serving and more altruistic behaviour as in between spending one’s income entirely on oneself (including their family) or donating a portion of it to external causes. Donating money to altruistic causes is not stipulated in the legal system. Therefore, there is no legal punishment that ensues from refusing or avoiding to do so. Furthermore, donations tend to be a rather private matter that is not often subject from interjections by the society. One can suggest that because of that, there is also a limited amount of societal pressure to act charitably. Thus, two major elements of retribution are removed from the behavioural scheme. Therefore, in an according situation, someone constrained by the moral component of their religious belief would appear generally more likely to be prompted into behaving in an unselfish way. The described hypothesis is quantified and tested empirically in further sections.

This work will comprise several subsequent sections. In the following section, there will be a more in-depth immersion into the existing literature and the comparison between the researched done so far with the idea and methods of this

5

work. In the succeeding section, the overview of the data is presented. This is followed by the description of the relevant methodology and, consequently, presentation and discussion of the results.

Literature review

One of the main works that inspired the idea and the concept of this thesis was a booked published by American sociologist Robert Putnam called ‘Bowling Alone’. In the book, Putnam, among other things, constructs the concept of social capital that he measures on a state basis. Then, he discusses the role that the capital plays in different areas of the American societies and demonstrates relationships between the social capital within a particular state and other socio-economic indicators. It was of interest that states with the greatest social capital did not necessarily correspond to the more irreligious democratic states but also included places like North and South Dakota and Montana. This inspired the idea that, potentially, there could be a relationship between the level of social capital and the role that religion and church play in a community. States with the highest social capital tend to fare better on the matters of education, family cohesion, social cohesion and other important components that tend to contribute to a more prosperous society. This seemed to challenge the view of more religious and Republican-leaning states in the US as being more backward and less socially developed. This challenge promoted the further interest in analyzing the topic and its implications.

As mentioned before, most work done so far tends to have a somewhat different perspective on how to address the issue. Nonetheless, it is rather useful in terms of formulating and justifying the theoretical framework needed for this analysis. Bird (1982) pointed to how Judaism and Christianity, both from a historical perspective, have encouraged charitable activity in their tradition. This is intrinsic not only to modern societal or secular interpretation of Christianity and Judaism but also, according to the author, to their older and more primitive forms. According to the author, Christian charity notion has a deeply rooted communal tradition that calls on assistance between community members. This could be an argument in favour of justifying further analysis on geographical basis.

An interesting result with rather profound implications for this work was established by Trotter (2005). He found in a cross-sectional study that Christians tended to be more generous when it came to charity that proponents of the so-called bioethics, a notion that ethical and moral construal can be grounded upon fundamental biological and evolutionary constructs of mankind. This result is rather interesting when addressing the aforementioned argument of impending sanctions for lack of compliance as opposed to an intrinsic biological notion of being altruistic and contributing to those surrounding an individual. Rabbitts

6

(2012) concluded that charitable activity was typically less prone to be incited by one-off campaigns for donations and was rather a product of one’s deeper involvement into identity and community-building. This is similarly an important result as it suggests that immediate incitement is less likely to invoke productive altruistic actions and, rather, requires a deeper attachment to the cause. This could be discussed as a more pertaining attribute to Christian communities as altruistic and communal orientation would appear more likely to constitute part of the identity that determines the course of action for them.

Even though, as described previously, effects of religiousness on financial transactions – such as charitable transaction – does not seem to have been devoted a lot of academic attention, the opposite relationship has been addressed more frequently. Buser (2013) studied the effects of income on religious activities of households in the Netherlands. He found that families that earn more tend to go to church more often. Furthermore, higher-earning families are more likely to be members of evangelical communities rather than those of mainstream Catholic Church. This appears to be an interesting angle on the issue of religion and its impact on communal ties and, consequently, charitable activities. It could suggest that increased charitable contributions may also be related to networks created within the more interconnected church communities. A somewhat related viewpoint was espoused by Belcher (2011) who was studying trends in church as a provider of social services. He outlined the role of Protestantism in providing temporary assistance to its congregation as well as undertaking the function of maintaining social order. Marty (1995) also found that federal contributions to church-related charities in the United States did not, in essence, impede the relative quality of charitable services within Christian communities by violating the intrinsic separation of church and state.

Economics of religion in general appears to be a relatively new field that has not been extensively elaborated upon in previously existing literature. Iyer (2016) lists several potential factors leading to an increased attention to the topic. Among those factors are development of more suitable behavioural models and accumulation of empirical data that allows for better conclusions on the subject matter. However, in an overview of the field, the author lists subjects that are still relatively different from the topic covered in this thesis. Iyer lists stigma-screening theory as one of the potential explanations for induction of certain desirable behaviours within the religious community. The argument appears to have a certain merit. However, previously in this work it was suggested that an important element for consideration in charitable behaviour is that it is relatively difficult to scrutinise and exercise social pressure over. It is worth noting, however, that the case may be somewhat different for charities directly associated with congregations.

7 Methodology

The method of determining the relationship between religious is based on state data and, as discussed previously, pertains to general trends within the population as opposed to individual-scale effects. In this work, the aim is to establish whether there is a statistically significant relationship between two phenomena. Therefore, there is originally a need to quantify the two parameters to be able to draw statistical inferences.

The chosen way of quantifying religious affiliation is by looking at the proportion of Christians residing in a particular state. Christian in this context entails an individual who identified themselves accordingly in the poll done by the Pew Research Institute. Christians are the predominant religious denomination across the entirety of the United States. It is also the original religious denomination, therefore, it makes decline in the proportion of Christians to be much more indicative of decline in religious affiliation in particular areas of the US. The same reasoning would generally not hold for other denominations as a substantial number of representatives of other religions came to the country at a later point in time through immigration mechanisms. Furthermore, they normally constitute a considerably smaller proportion of the population. Therefore, oscillations in their numbers are less likely to serve as good predictors in fluctuations of religiousness in the US. It is worth noting that a more extensive analysis would incorporate controlling for shares of other denominations to more precisely estimate the trends in religiousness across different states.

The selected measure to quantify charitable activity was chosen to be the so-called giving ratio, the proportion of personal income given to charitable purposes. The measure excludes medical and certain other emergency expenditures from the calculation of the income aggregate. Therefore, the share is taken of income that was not allocated to those purposes. This measure is a convenient benchmark as it provides the average of what households across different income brackets contribute to charity in various regions across the United States. Propensity to give to charity, i.e. willingness to contribute a certain share, is a significantly more valuable measure for the purposes of this research as opposed to the overall value of the contributions donated by particular individuals. For the purposes of this research, the interest is in relative terms – the propensity – as opposed to gross amounts.

Naturally, there are other state-specific parameters that are likely to influence the willingness to contribute. Therefore, it seemed sensible to introduce certain control variables to try to avoid omitted variable bias and provide a more adequate estimate of the influence of religiousness on charitable contributions. One less subtle variable that seems to be crucial to take into account for the measurements is the general level of income within a state. In spite of the fact that the measure of charitable activity used in this work is relative, it is possible that

8

different levels of income within states promote different propensity to contribute to altruistic causes. The presumption here is somewhat akin to the decreasing marginal propensity to consume that sets in with higher incomes. It is possible that individuals with more wealth are more likely to contribute a greater share of their earnings as their consumptive demands are met to a larger extent. As in this work, trends in individual behaviour are approximated by tendencies within states, the income should come at aggregate state levels. Therefore, a measure to be introduced into the analysis as a control variable is state GDP per capita.

Another important control measure is the level of public spending in a certain state. There are several reasons why this measure can be intrinsically influence charitable activity. Firstly, the level of awareness that the state is spending more money publically may make individuals less willing to contribute from their individual funds as it would create the sensation that people are being cared for to a greater extent already. Furthermore, an increase in public spending, and particularly in transfer payments, tends to have a more atomising effect on communities as it has been shown by multiple precedents in modern economy. The more prominent examples of that include increase in child benefits and the corresponding rise in the proportion of single motherhoods; an increase in student benefits and an earlier detachment of children from their parents. Another important element is that higher per capita spending also entails higher levels of taxation which influence the level of disposable income for an individual. Therefore, in states with approximately the same income individuals may be able to spend less if their state has a higher level of public spending and imposes more taxes on economic agents.

Combining those control variables with the dependent variable and the percentage of Christians in a particular state, we obtain the basic regression equation for the purposes of this analysis. As there is no time framework involved or no ordinary variables in the equation are present, it seems sensible to resort to using the most simplistic form of regression. The equation then looks as follows.

Charityi = ChristianSharei + GDPi + PublicSpendingi + ui

Data

In order to provide a quantified estimate of charitable activity, we use the so-called giving ratio. It is a measure of the proportion of an individual’s income spent on charitable activities with a deduction of earnings that are allocated for emergency and medical expenditures. The estimate is computed by a research centre that overlooks charitable activity in the United States. They compute the ratio for US residents based on their state and also on their postal code. The most

9

general ratio, which comprises the results among different income groups, is selected for the purposes of this work, as our interest does not lie within income discrepancies between individuals. It is worth noting that this estimate may contain a certain bias of estimation because of the richer individuals contributing a greater share of their income. However, it should not generally affect this analysis as those biases would not be state-specific and would not affect cross-state measurements.

Quantification of the data on religious affiliation was conducted on a state basis. The primary reason is because it would be very difficult to obtain the data with relevant parameters for individual cases. Furthermore, someone’s individual responses to the questions on their prior charitable activity may not be reliable as they may have an incentive to overstate their contributions. Therefore, the quantified variable is the proportion of Christians in a particular state. The data on the level of Christians was provided by the Pew Research Institute. They based their estimates on polling data where they would ask individuals to self-identify themselves on a certain number of dimensions. The data on religious affiliation is usually based on a sample of several hundred to a thousand people, varying on the population of the state.

Data on GDP and public spending per capita was obtained from the US Government budget webpage. GDP is represented in adjusted terms for the year 2015. However, discounting to a particular historical purchasing power of the US Dollar is not significant for the purposes of this research. The level of public spending is represented as a proportion of the state GDP. The data is similarly for the year 2015. The variables discussed are presented in the table below.

State % of

Christians Giving Ratio

Public Spending as % of GDP GDP per Capita Alabama 86 4.87 11.55 42,663 Alaska 62 2.78 18.43 81,801 Arizona 67 3.06 8.4 43,269 Arkansas 79 4.14 11.81 41,129 California 63 2.79 8.45 61,924 Colorado 64 2.87 7.46 58,009 Connecticut 70 2.58 9.68 72,331 Delaware 69 2.74 12.14 69,930 Florida 70 3.38 7.35 42,595 Georgia 79 4.31 7.48 48,574 Hawaii 63 2.77 13.59 55,598 Idaho 67 4.2 10.65 39,398

10 Illinois 71 2.8 8.47 59,472 Indiana 72 3.34 8.85 49,328 Iowa 77 3.03 9.21 52,807 Kansas 76 3.57 7.38 50,218 Kentucky 76 3.46 11.42 41,586 Louisiana 84 3.34 10.2 54,159 Maine 60 2.13 13.3 41,477 Maryland 69 3.2 7.94 60,097 Massachusetts 58 2.43 10.08 69,705 Michigan 70 3.07 9.99 46,585 Minnesota 74 2.7 7.93 60,256 Mississippi 83 5.04 14.31 35,717 Missouri 77 3.38 7.89 47,209 Montana 65 3.01 12.53 44,308 Nebraska 75 3.67 7.5 59,175 Nevada 66 2.92 5.08 48,639 New Hampshire 59 1.85 8.32 53,834 New Jersey 67 2.12 9.83 64,070 New Mexico 75 3 13.19 41,551 New York 60 2.98 9.45 72,965 North Carolina 77 3.79 8.09 50,159 North Dakota 77 2.54 8.97 70,926 Ohio 73 2.82 10.4 51,052 Oklahoma 79 4.46 10.29 46,298 Oregon 61 2.88 9.87 56,009 Pennsylvania 73 2.68 10.2 52,925 Rhode Island 75 2.2 11.86 53,321 South Carolina 78 4.16 11.84 40,212 South Dakota 79 3.45 8.42 51,902 Tennessee 81 4.63 6.93 46,531 Texas 77 3.59 6 59,994 Utah 73 6.61 9.12 48,965 Vermont 54 2.49 16.32 47,520 Virginia 73 2.85 8.14 56,891 Washington 61 3.08 8.59 62,213 West Virginia 78 2.83 14.46 38,567 Wisconsin 71 2.52 9.41 51,456 Wyoming 71 3.45 9.57 68,536

11 Results

The output above presents the results of the regression described in the methodology section. The result with respect to the coefficient of the variable reflecting the proportion of Christians in a state is in accordance with expectations. The beta coefficient for the variable suggests that with each additional percent of Christians in the population of a state, the giving ratio in that state would increase by 0.05%. The coefficient is significant at the level of 1%. This result is rather unsurprising within the framework of the model described previously. In the next paragraph, we will discuss and interpret the coefficients in further detail.

We will start the analysis with the interpretation of control variables to further focus on the primary variable of interest. Firstly, the coefficient for public spending is negative. This is in accordance with the expectations and the reasoning described in the methodology section. However, it is not statistically significant. The obtained results suggests that an additional per cent of a state’s GDP being diverted to public spending results in a 0.015% decline in the giving ratio. As described before, this would fit the rationale as it would be reasonable to expect people to assume that their kin are being take care of by the state as well as enhancing alienation between individuals to a certain extent. However, the standard error of the coefficient is too high to claim the significance of the result. Further investigation into the variable would be useful as 0.015% is a rather considerable fraction of the average giving ratio.

A more surprising result with respect to the theoretical notions is the coefficient associated with the state GDP. It shows to have a very miniscule negative effect

12

on the giving ratio. The variable is statistically significant. In the methodology section, a hypothesis was proposed that in a richer state, individuals are probably more likely to donate a larger portion of their income to charitable purposes. This was linked to the idea of the decreasing marginal propensity to consume and the notion that in wealthier states, more of the consumption necessities of individuals are likely to be met. However, the results show to the contrary. Having a higher GDP does not seem to actually make individuals engage more in charitable behaviour. It is possible that attaining additional income does not prompt one to spend a greater portion of their wealth in donations. This would not be an outlandish observation. However, the coefficient suggests that an additional thousand dollars in the state GDP would actually diminish the giving ratio by 0.02%. This might not be a very high magnitude of the effect. Yet, the idea that an incremental growth in wealth makes inhabitants of the states less willing to donate may appear somewhat counterintuitive. Nonetheless, there are explanations that may be proposed in defence of such observation. Since the data in question is state aggregate data, there is a possibility that in wealthier states there can be, on average, fewer social issues that call on public intervention. It may be that there are fewer causes that require individuals to engage in voluntary funds transfer to assist their fellow citizens. However, these explanations are still speculative and require further in-depth analysis.

With respect to the explanatory variable, however, the outcome falls in line with the prediction made in the theoretical part. An additional per cent of Christian population in a state provides an incremental increase in the giving ratio by 0.05%. This is a rather considerable proportion of an average giving ratio. From these estimates, it would appear that a greater involvement of the local population with the Christian faith tends to result in higher proportions of income being donated to charitable purposes. The result appears to be consistent with the hypothetical explanation provided in the introduction. When it comes to charity, there are no legal mechanisms of enforcement. Similarly, as charity is a rather private matter that does not entail large social interference, there is normally little public reprimand associated with not being involved in charitable causes. Therefore, with two major sources of reprimand removed, it would not appear surprising that someone religiously involved may feel a greater degree of responsibility for self-serving behaviour as opposed to contributing to well-being of other members of community. A possible justification proposed is that for those religiously affiliated, there is still the notion of potential divine involvement and further retribution if they were to behave in a selfish manner as opposed to acting altruistically. Certainly, in order to make any deeper-rooted causal statements, a more in-depth analysis of causes of altruistic behaviour is necessary. The coefficients in the model have a jointly significant impact, which is unsurprising given the previously discussed effects of individual variables. An important parameter to look at is R-squared. In this model, it is equal to

13

approximately 0.36, which indicated that 36 per cent of the variance in the data is explained by the model. Even though the outcome is imperfect, 0.36 is an R-squared value to be considered seriously in this model. Firstly, it does indicate that 36 per cent of the ensuing variation in altruistic behaviour can be explained by the parameters used above. Given the insignificance of the level of GDP, one can attribute most of the effect to the remaining two parameters.

This, however, prompted the importance of looking at a regression where religious affiliation would be singled out as a parameter to consider its individual effects. In this case, the R-squared in question declines to 0.31. Therefore, in the model with religiousness as the only explanatory variable, 31 per cent of the variation is still explained by the model. Therefore, religious affiliation seems to have a rather substantial individual capacity to explain changes in generosity observed in the dataset. As it was mentioned before, such an analysis of the impact of a parameter on behaviour would generally require a rather precisely tailored set of control variables to be able to provide a further and more detailed explanation in behavioural changes. However, with time and resources constraints associated with the writing of this thesis, it was not entirely possible to allocate sufficient effort into establishing what those factors are. Furthermore, imprecision of controls can be attributed to the very fabric of the topic. For instance, given the available data, it is not always possible to differentiate between people who identify themselves as Christians. Such identification could be entirely denominational in a certain proportion of the population without further religious or spiritual significance. In addition to that, the available data does not allow making distinctions between different levels of religious involvement whenever it is actually present. Therefore, it is more difficult to make more accurate inferences about the ensuing impact.

The previous critical assessment of the results is rather crucial to understanding and fairly presenting the investigative limitations of the analysis conducted in this

14

thesis. Nonetheless, it is important to understand that in spite of the implied imperfections, it does provide a statistically significant result in the context of an econometrically viable model. There is a clearly statistically significant coefficient with respect to the variable of interest that falls in line with the theoretical prediction of the model designed for this analysis. Furthermore, the regression analysis does show that a significant proportion of the variation in the model can be explained by the independent variable selected. This also withstands the robustness analysis for the cases when controls are included and excluded. This provides an important beginning point for a further research into the subject matter by showing that there appear to be traceable effects of religiousness on propensity to charitable behaviour. The implications of these results and conclusions drawn from this analysis are further discussed in the subsequent section.

Conclusions and discussion

In the concluding section, it would be sensible to first present a brief summary of the results obtained in the analysis. By taking the cross-state data for the United States of America on charitable activity and religious affiliation, we established that there appeared to be a statistically significant positive impact of the latter on the former within the model designed. Similarly, data on GDP and public spending was used in order to attempt to create control variables for the analysis. As shown by robustness check, the control variables did not contribute significantly to the explanatory power of the model. However, as it was predicted in the theoretical part, public spending also tends to show negative impact on charitable activity. Yet, the coefficient obtained for that variable was not statistically significant, and it is thus not exactly possible to draw conclusions about its effects.

With respect to the main variable of interest, the proportion of Christians in a given state, there appears to be a statistically significant positive relationship when with regard to the giving ratio in the state. An increase in the proportion of Christians by one per cent appears to entail an increase in the giving ratio by approximately 0.05 per cent. This appears to be a rather significant proportion given the overall volume of the average giving ratio across the state. This suggests that an increased proportion of Christians has an aggregate effect on the level of contributions in a giving state, thereby raising the average in consideration. The result is statistically significant and does not seem to be impacted very significantly when alterations in control variables are applied.

The relevance of the matter could hardly be understated. If further analysis into the subject matter is shown to be true, then we are dealing with a phenomenon that is showing that a decline in religiousness likely corresponds to a decline in

15

charitable activity. As religious affiliation around the native population of Western countries generally appears to be on the decline, we may be experiencing further diminishing of the propensity to allocate one’s funds for charitable purposes. In this analysis, only actual financial contributions were considered as a dependent variable. It is thus not possible to draw further conclusions about how other altruistic behaviours would be affected. However, given the theoretical framework of the explanation, it would not be surprising if similar tendencies were observed to hold for other non-selfish behaviours in individuals and communities. If one were to take existing insights from Behavioural Economics and assume that an individual requires an external societal push in order to contribute, one could presume that a diminishing in the significance of the threat of divine retribution could have further effects on altruistic behaviours that are not managed by the law or are not subject to public scrutiny. It may indicate that with a passage of time, individuals will be more likely to behave in a more selfish manner with a lesser regard for the well-being of those in their vicinity. Naturally, these propositions are speculative at this stage and require further analytical involvement. However, they are likely to be something to be reckoned with. If this were to be true, one might have to give further reconsideration to existing policies that would need to acknowledge and accommodate an increase in self-oriented behaviour.

As discussed more extensively in previous sections of this thesis, there are certain issues pertaining to internal validity that should be addressed in more detail in further research. Firstly, there is a difficulty in differentiating between the extent and the actuality of religiousness among those questioned in the polls. Provided their answers, one obtains simply their denomination and not the actual extent of their religious involvement, which may be nominal. On the other hand, it may be extreme and thus conflict with behaviours that cater to a positive social externality. For a more comprehensive analysis, a more individualised data would be required. In addition to that, there is an issue of obtaining and systematising relevant control variables necessary to address the question. Given the time and resources constraints for this thesis, it was not entirely possible to look deeper into other aspects of behaviour that may be interfering with one’s propensity for charitable activity.

There are certain issues with regards to the external validity that should be further addressed in research of the topic. Firstly, the focus of this work was on the Christian denomination. This was done because a decline in the proportion of Christians seemed to be the best available proxy for a decrease in religious affiliation. However, it is not entirely clear whether these results would be robust with respect to other prominent denominations. Different religious paradigms entail different attitude to altruism and community which may divert the impact that affiliation with another denomination can have on charitable activity. In any case, given the growth of some other denominations around the world and in the

16

Western countries, it would certainly be an interesting and important issue to address. Another important component, as stated earlier in this section, would be to take a further look in other altruistic activists that do not necessarily pertain to the financial or donation component. Given the existing assumption made about a possible nature of changes in charitable behaviour, similar tendencies may apply to other altruistic activities. However, this is a hypothesis that should be addressed in a more comprehensive manner in further research.

17 Biliography

Belcher, J. R., & Tice, C. J. (2011). Protestant Church Charity: History, Trends, and Implications. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social

Thought, 30(2), 164–177. http://doi.org/10.1080/15426432.2011.567117

Bird, F. (1982) A Comparative Study of The Work of Charity in Christianity and Judaism. The Journal of Religious Ethics, 20(10), 144-169.

Buser, T. (2015). The effect of income on religiousness. American Economic

Journal: Applied Economics, 7(3),178-95.

Iyer, S. (2015). The New Economics of Religion, 54, 395–441.

Marty, M. (1995). Church and state charity. The Christian Century, 112(7), 255. Rabbitts, F. (2012). Child sponsorship, ordinary ethics and the geographies of

charity. Geoforum, 43(5), 926–936.

http://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.04.006

Trotter, G. (2005). Bioethics, Christian charity and the view from no place.

Christian Bioethics, 11(3), 317–31.