What makes devout Christians happier? Evidence from Taiwan

Abstract

This study divides the effects of religious involvement on subjective well being (SWB) into direct and indirect channels. The indirect channels mean that, by improving its adherents’ present lives, religion enhances their happiness. It is found that devout Christians enhance their SWB by means of one direct channel and three indirect channels; these indirect channels being high health expectations, good family relationship expectations and sound social networks. A good family relationship expectation is found to be the most important factor among the indirect channels. Devout Christians are happier than their counterparts based on a probability of 28, 55, and 45% of the 28% are accounted for by the direct channel and the three indirect channels, respectively.

Acknowledgements

The data analysed in this article were collected as a result of the research project entitled ‘1999 Taiwan Social Change Survey (Year 5 of Cycle 3)’ sponsored by Taiwan's National Science Council, and compiled by the Institute for Social Sciences and the Office of Survey Research, Academia Sinica. The author appreciates the assistance of the institutes in providing data.

Notes

¹ These include Protestants in the United States, Catholics in Europe, Buddhists in Japan, Zulus in South Africa, Parsis in India and Jews in Israel.

² Many studies, e.g. McBride (2001) and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2005), stress the important role of relative income in relation to happiness. However, relative income is constructed on the basis of absolute income.

³ Kim (2003)'s analysis does not control income or educational attainment. He hence cannot conclude that the higher SWB of Christians is due to their strong beliefs and frequent religious activities.

⁴ According to John 3:16 in the Bible: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

⁵ For more details see Takakusu (1956).

⁶ Here we combine folk religionists and Taoists since their beliefs are similar and most Taiwanese cannot distinguish one from the other. In our sample, there are 491 folk religionists and 196 Taoists.

⁷ For more details on Taiwanese folk religions, see Jordan (1985).

⁸ Glenn (1982) and Heaton (1984) suggest that marital satisfaction is somewhat higher in same-faith marriages than in mixed-faith unions, and Heaton and Pratt (1990) and Lehrer and Chiswick (1993) point out that homogamous marriages are less likely to end in divorce. The spouse's religious affiliation is not available in this data set. An early survey in 1994 contains information on the spouse's religious affiliation, but it does not contain expectations regarding the family relationship. The 1994 data were used to examine religious homogamy between husband and wife across religions. Homogamous couples in terms of religion were 74, 77 and 47% for Buddhists, folk religionists and Christians, respectively. Religious homogamy in the case of Christians was the lowest probably because Christianity is a minority religion, and it is not easy to find another Christian as a spouse.

⁹ Other occupations constitute the reference base.

¹⁰ All of the procedures adopted for the Wu–Hausman test follow pp. 257–59 in Johnston and DiNardo (1997). The instrumental variables for job stability, health expectations, family relationship expectations and social networks contain five professionals dummy variables, wage squared, age squared and dummy variable for experience of serious sick for more than a month.

¹¹ The instrumental variables used are the father's four religious dummy variables. In general, a father's belief determines his children's belief, but the reverse is not common.

¹² The instrumental variables used are years of belief. This must be an exogenous variable, and it is likely that the longer the belief is held, the more devout the religionist.

¹³ Other minority religions contain many religions with completely different doctrines. Hence, it is not meaningful to test the difference between Christians and other minority religionists.

¹⁴ For more details, see Greene (2003).