by Ryan Law
Last year the New York Times[1] published an article titled “Is Your Religion Your Financial Destiny?”. I have come back to this article and discussed it with several people and finally decided to write about it. The graph about speaks for itself, but I have a few comments about it.
First, the graph:
If you have a hard time reading the graph in your e-mail, you can pull up a copy online here:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/05/15/magazine/15-Leonhardt.html?ref=magazine
A couple of notes – the y-axis shows the percentage of households with an annual income above $75,000 in each religion listed. The x-axis shows the percentage of college graduates from each religion listed. For example, among Anglicans/Episcopalians, approximately 52% have an income above $75,000, and about 52% are also college graduates. The national average of all households in America that make over $75,000 is about 30%, while about 27% of all households in America have graduated from college.
On the low end of the graph we have Jehovah’s Witnesses, with less than 20% of households making over $75,000 and less than 10% college graduates, while at the other end about 65% of Hindus make over $75,000 and about 74% have a college education.
As you look at the graph, do you notice a trend? Does it almost look like you could draw a line that would slant up and to the right and hit almost every point? With the exception of a few in the middle, and a slight dip at the end, you almost could draw a straight line. What does this mean?
First, and this is definitely worth noting, religion does seem to have a factor in how much money people make. The study, conducted by the Pew Research Group, shows that religion plays a greater role in predicting your income than the differences among states or even racial groups.
Second, college education and wealth go hand-in-hand, and some religions place a high emphasis on education.
I would be interested to seeing where atheists fit on the graph. We have one titled “unaffiliated religions” but nothing for atheists.
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