Is there a religious explanation for high life satisfaction in Latin America?

Abstract

Recent initiatives call for the incorporation of subjective well-being measures in the assessment of development. Latin Americans do report, on average, very high life satisfaction levels, which are also higher than what would be predicted for their socio-economic situation. Within this context, it becomes relevant to explore some arguments that have been proposed to explain high life satisfaction in Latin America within a not so favourable socio-economic context. This paper studies the soundness of the religious explanation for high life satisfaction in Latin America; the argument is based on modernisation theories, and it states that higher-than-expected life satisfaction in Latin America is explained by high religiosity in the region. The investigation relies on representative surveys applied in three high life-satisfaction Latin American countries (Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico), as well as to the non-Hispanic White population in the United States. A cross-regional methodology is implemented to study the role of religious practice, religious-events participation, and religious affiliation in explaining higher-than-­expected life satisfaction in Latin America. It is found that religious variables do not explain the high life satisfaction levels in the Latin American countries under study.

Keywords:

• Life satisfaction
• religiosity
• religious affiliation
• religious practice
• Latin America
• modernisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The three Latin American countries in the survey consistently report well-being levels that are higher than what is expected for their economic figures. The recently released Seventh Wave of the World Value Survey (WVS) provides information showing that Colombia occupies the third and Mexico the fourth position in life satisfaction. Costa Rica is not included in the WVS, but its life satisfaction is the highest in the world according to information from the Gallup World Poll 2007 -the only wave where the life satisfaction question was included-.

2 Any regional classification of the world is arbitrary; in this case the classification follows cultural and geographical criteria. The classification’s purpose is not to define a compartmentalization of the world, it is just to depict the situation of Latin American countries in comparison to the rest of countries in the world.

3 SSI (Survey Sampling International) in the USA, CNC (Centro Nacional de Consultoría) in Colombia, Borge y Asociados in Costa Rica, and DATA Opinión Pública y Mercados in Mexico.

4 Hereafter, when referring to figures and empirical findings based on the survey, the ‘Latin America’ term refers to the three countries under study: Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico. In addition, the ‘United States’ term refers to the non-Hispanic White population in the United States

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and Saint Louis University.

Notes on contributors

Mariano Rojas

Mariano Rojas (Costa Rican/Mexican) is Professor of Economics at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, Spain. He was previously Professor of Economics at Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO-México), Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, and Universidad de las Américas - Puebla. He holds a PhD in Economics from The Ohio State University. His areas of research are: subjective well-being, happiness, quality of life, poverty studies, economic development and social progress. He was President of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. He coordinated the Mexican Initiative Measuring the Progress of Societies: A Perspective from Mexico, which aimed to contribute from Latin America to the global discussion on new ways of conceiving and measuring social performance and progress. He has written and edited many academic papers and books dealing with happiness, well-being and paradigm shift in the notion of social progress, mostly with a Latin American perspective, such as: The Scientific Study of Happiness; Handbook of Happiness Research in Latin America; The Economics of Happiness: How the Easterlin Paradox Transformed our Understanding of Wellbeing and Progress; and Well-Being in Latin America: Drivers and Policies.