Comments on Epiphenom: Why should government welfare mean less religion?

an: yeah, that's right. The graph shows...

2009-07-02T20:26:14.989+01:00

an: yeah, that's right. The graph shows welfare spend as a proportion of GDP. So Norway scores lower than expected cos of all the oil wealth (a large part of which they stick in the bank).

RBH: if you find that study, let me know!

One should be able to replicate Paul's study i...

2009-07-02T14:01:52.931+01:00

One should be able to replicate Paul's study in the United States, looking at the individual states' religiosity and the various societal health measures he used. I have a faint memory that some sort of thing's been done, but can't recall where or when.

Oops. I didn't notice the concept gross domest...

2009-07-01T23:38:02.637+01:00

Oops. I didn't notice the concept gross domestic product... Norway's GDP is very high because the oil, and that may explain the thing.

Hi! Where did you get your data from? I was surp...

2009-07-01T23:26:59.095+01:00

Hi!

Where did you get your data from?

I was surprised about the claim that Sweden were spending much more money on health than Norwey (see photo).

According to WHO (2007):

"Country with highest government spending per person per year on health: Norway (US$ 4508)

Country with lowest government spending per person per year on health: Burundi (US$ 0.70)"

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs319/en/index.html

As a person, who lives next to Norway, I am very sceptical about claims that Sweden had greater welfare expenses than Norway. In fact, all statistics I've seen have shown the opposite. (Of course it is a bit difficult to compare the systems, because in scandinavian countries the welfare system is so different than in USA. But could you tell the your source you used, where is stated that Sweden spents much more money on welfare than Norway?

Anon, they don't give the r^2 on that r...

2009-06-28T10:45:00.736+01:00

Anon, they don't give the r^2 on that regression, but for the full model (including regulation, pluralism and urbanisation) it's 0.65. Welfare is the strongest factor in the model.

jdhuey and Bjørn: I agree with both! There's clearly a lot of different factors. In the US, the religious right gets its strength from a combination of the economic interests of the wealthy and the religious interests of the poor. They unite them by providing low taxes to one and conservatism religious values to the other.

As I understand it, there is a link between liberalism and education, though I'm not to sure how strong that link is. And as you point out, the more divided a society is - especially ethnically, the less support there is for welfare (Alberto Alesina has published on this).

My suspicion is that the more educated people are,...

2009-06-28T06:49:50.542+01:00

My suspicion is that the more educated people are, the more likely they are to see religion, and especially its practice, as vacuous, and also the more likely to see the understand the benefit of welfare.

I also imagine that another component is the size of the population. The bigger a group of people is, the less likely people are to value sharing with everyone else, and instead value other forms of sharing at a lower level, such as through religious groups.

You should post the r^2 value on that regression.

2009-06-28T04:29:22.742+01:00

You should post the r^2 value on that regression.

It is my impression that here in the USA, at least...

2009-06-28T02:36:28.182+01:00

It is my impression that here in the USA, at least, that the more authoritarian (read right wing) the religious group is the more it opposes the the use of direct government (secular) aid to people. They tend to couch there reasons in terms of personal responsibility but I've always suspected that that their actual motivations were fear of competition and appearing superfluous.