Are Religious People Happier, Healthier?

I have shared with you before some statistics from Pew Research Center.  They do a lot of religious-based surveys and are considered a reliable source for information.  In 2019 they published a piece entitled “Are religious people happier, healthier? Our new global study explores this question.” Here are five of their conclusions from surveys in 19 countries:

Actively religious people are more likely than their less-religious peers to describe themselves as “very happy” in about half of the countries surveyed.  Sometimes the gaps are striking: In the U.S., for instance, 36% of the actively religious describe themselves as “very happy,” compared with 25% of the inactively religious and 25% of the unaffiliated. 

There is not a clear connection between religiosity and the likelihood that people will describe themselves as being in “very good” overall health. Even after controlling for factors that might affect the results, such as age, income and gender, there are only three countries out of the 26 where the actively religious are likely to report better health than everyone else — the U.S., Taiwan and Mexico. Religiously active people also don’t seem to be any healthier by two other, more specific measures: obesity and frequency of exercise.

At the same time, the actively religious are generally less likely than the unaffiliated to smoke and drink.  In all but two of 19 countries for which data are available, the actively religious are less likely than the unaffiliated to smoke, and, in all but one country, less likely than the inactively religious to do so. The actively religious also tend to drink less, although the findings are not as stark: In 11 of the 19 countries, people who attend services at least monthly are less likely than the rest of the population to drink several times a week.

People who attend religious services at least monthly often are more likely than “nones” to join other types of (nonreligious) organizations, such as charities and clubs. 

The actively religious generally are more likely than others to vote.  In the U.S., 69% of the actively religious say they always vote, compared with 59% of inactives and 48% of the unaffiliated. 

So good for us active religious people. We are happier on the whole, even if we are not necessarily healthier than our non-religious peers. We drink and smoke less, which is probably pretty good and we are involved in the community as well.  We vote and we support charities and clubs.  Science cannot meaningfully measure religious things like does prayer work or not, but we can see correlations between things like religion and a greater sense of happiness.