L.A.M.: L.A.M. on the Relationship Between Religion And Various Social-Economic Factors

Pew Research has released data indicating Singapore as the most religiously diverse country in the world with a Religious Diversity Index of 9.0. Based on their research and data, Singapore's population is made up of:

Buddhists: 33.9%
Christians: 18.2%
Unaffiliated: 16.4%

Muslims: 14.3%
Other Religions: 9.7%
Hindus: 5.2%

Jewish: < 0.1%

Looking at the data and research from Pew Research, led me to question whether there is any correlation between Religion and various other Social-Economic Factors. Luckily for me, they uploaded excel based data of their research which I was able to transpose onto various other commonly available data for Social-Economic Factors to come out with analysis like:

Before you look through the data, please note that I am not trying to demean one religion over another and am not here to incite any religious or racial hatred, all I have done is to merely provide some statistics based on widely published numbers.

Concentration of Religion vs Birth Rates

For example, I downloaded data on Birth Rates per 1000 and compared it with the religious diversity data from Pew Research to obtain the following correlation between concentration of religion and birth rates

Correlations	Birth Rate
Muslim	0.321
Folk Religions	0.087
Jewish	-0.023
Hindu	-0.061
Buddhist	-0.102
Christian	-0.128
Other Religions	-0.129
Unaffiliated	-0.387

Interpreting from the correlation table above. Higher concentration of Muslims is correlated with higher birthrates, while having higher concentrations of people with no religious affiliations is correlated with lower birthrates.

Shown above are scatter plots of the concentration of Muslims vs Birth Rates and concentration of No Religious Affiliation vs Birth Rates.

Concentration of Religion vs Life Expectancy

Correlations	Overall Life Expectancy
Other Religions	0.122
Jewish	0.095
Christian	0.095
Buddhist	0.055
Unaffiliated	0.037
Hindu	0.037
Folk Religions	-0.092
Muslim	-0.248

Interpreting from the correlation table above. Higher concentration of Other Religions is weakly correlated with higher life expectancy, while having higher concentrations of Muslims is correlated with lower life expectancy.

Concentration of Religion vs Literacy

Correlations	Literacy
Christian	0.275
Other Religions	0.117
Unaffiliated	0.117
Jewish	0.056
Buddhist	0.015
Hindu	-0.049
Folk Religions	-0.153
Muslim	-0.374

Interpreting from the correlation table above. Higher concentration of Christianity is correlated with higher literacy, while having higher concentrations of Muslims is correlated with lower literacy.

Concentration of Religion vs GDP (PPP) per capita

Correlations	GDP (PPP) per capita
Other Religions	0.142
Unaffiliated	0.087
Jewish	0.087
Christian	0.079
Folk Religions	0.050
Buddhist	-0.015
Hindu	-0.026
Muslim	-0.210

Interpreting from the correlation table above. Higher concentration of Other Religions is correlated with higher GDP (PPP) per capita, while having higher concentrations of Muslims is correlated with lower GDP (PPP) per capita. This is very interesting, some countries with high concentrations of Muslims like Qatar (67.7%) have very high GDP per capita. However the presence of countries like Niger (98.4% Muslim), Afghanistan (99.7% Muslim) bring down the overall correlation to a negative one.

Concentration of Religion vs Average IQ

Correlations	Average IQ
Other Religions	0.196
Buddhist	0.147
Unaffiliated	0.081
Jewish	0.064
Christian	0.017
Folk Religions	-0.030
Hindu	-0.096
Muslim	-0.245

Interpreting from the correlation table above. Higher concentration of Other Religions is correlated with higher average IQ, while having higher concentrations of Muslims is correlated with lower average IQ.

So based on the analysis, there appears to some positive correlations between

1) Concentrations of Muslims vs Birth Rates
2) Concentrations of Other Religions vs Life Expectancy
3) Concentrations of Christianity vs Literacy
4) Concentrations of Other Religions vs GDP (PPP) per capita
5) Concentrations of Other Religions vs Ave IQ

L.A.M.

PS: Feel free to reach comment below, if you would like me to analyze between concentration of religion against any other commonly available data. Full data will be available for download at the end of today.

Note:

1) I would like to clarify that correlation does not equal to causation. Although there are some statistical correlation between concentration of religion and various factors, it does not necessarily mean that a particular religion results in higher wealth, literacy, birth rates etc. There could be many other factors involved that are not accounted for in the analysis.

2) I am not trying to demean one religion over another and am not here to incite any religious or racial hatred, all I have done is to merely provide some statistics based on widely published numbers.

3) Finally, there will definitely be outliers in the data, so although people can claim things like but XXX country is so rich and they have alot of people from religion YYY, the presence of these outliers do not necessarily disprove the data.

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References:

Life Expectancy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Religious diversity:

http://www.pewforum.org/data/

Birth Rate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_birth_rate

Literacy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate

GDP per capita: