2022-12-07, 05:34 PM
Does religious faith lead to a happier, healthier life?
David Robson / The Guardian
David Robson / The Guardian
Quote:Unlike some other areas of scientific research suffering from the infamous “replication crisis,” these studies have examined populations across the globe, with remarkably consistent results. And the effect sizes are large. Laura Wallace at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, for instance, recently examined obituaries of more than 1,000 people across the US and looked at whether the article recorded the person’s religious affiliation — a sign that their faith had been a major element of their identity.
Publishing her results in 2018, she reported that those people marked out for their faith lived for 5.6 years more, on average, than those whose religion had not been recorded; in a second sample, looking specifically at a set of obituaries from Des Moines in Iowa, the difference was even greater — about 10 years in total.
“It’s on par with the avoidance of major health risks — like smoking,” says Wallace.