Historically , wax riches has coincided with a decrease in the exponent of religious belief . Today , the poorest countries in the world are among themost spiritual . Oil states apart , the reverse is also usually true . These observations have inspired the widespread assumption that wealth reduce religious fervour . However , one study has thrown that into question , concluding that an increase in non - religious note value precedes and can predict economic growth , rather than following after .
A classic study of Trobriand Islanders find that those with more risky life – fish in the open ocean rather than in a protected atoll – were moresuperstitious . Sociologists have seen something similar with religious belief . the great unwashed who are one bad harvest from destitution are more potential to seek God ’s favor to save them than those less at risk . Moreover , the full-bodied rarely wish to be told their status has more to do with outside interference than their own efforts , so the leaning to assign success to the hand of the Lord declines as material wealth rises .
Even in the United States , where rates of church attending and spiritual identification remainmuch higherthan other fertile nations , this seems to be change asatheism risesamong youthful Americans .
However , University of Bristol PhD student Damian Ruck of the University of Bristol argues inScience Advancesthat we have the story the amiss way around . Using cadence of secularisation ( that is the decline in religious religion ) in 109 commonwealth from 1910 - 2014 , Ruck used the statistical proficiency of time - lagged statistical regression to see which came first .
wayward to prospect , secularization introduce economic ontogeny , rather than following it . Each standard deflexion increase in a quantification of secular note value was associate with an extra $ 1,000 of Gross Domestic Product per capita ( adjusted to 1990 American dollars ) over the subsequent 10 age and $ 5,000 over 30 years .
This design keep back true across very dissimilar cultures , irrespective of which religion was decline . For some of the nations Ruck consider , data was missing for part of the geological period , but this was not the lawsuit for Great Britain , Nigeria , Chile , or the Philippines , all of which show the same pattern .
The metier of the relationship has increase with time ; by the nineties , the extent of secularization explicate 40 pct of the departure in economic ontogeny between nations .
This would appear to rule out the possible action that economical growth causes religious decline , but that does n’t mean the reverse is reliable . Ruck know that some other factor could be driving both secularisation and economical growth , with the latter a lagged effect . However , the most obvious suspect , education , did not prove prognosticative of secularisation .
rather , the paper points to stick out for individual right field , particularly women ’s right , as a strong possibility , predicting secularization well and economic growth well . The true riches - creators may not be entrepreneurs , but those who stand against religious zealotry for tolerance and woman ’s release .
