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God, man and growth
Nov 13th 2003
Two economists go where angels fear to tread

IF YOU want to avoid an argument over religion at your next dinner party, you might suppose it safe to invite an economist or two. They, of all people, could be expected to stick to Mammon. Or maybe not, if a new paper* by Robert Barro, one of America's best-known economists, and Rachel McCleary, a colleague at Harvard University, is any guide. It explores the influence of religious belief and observance on economic growth.

To be sure, this is not the first time that economists have held forth on subjects that many people consider private. Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, is well known for applying economic theory to questions such as whether marriage is economically efficient, whether drug addiction is rational and how couples decide how many children to have. Mostly, though, economists have so far left religion alone. However, other students of society have not been shy of offering ideas about religion and wealth. A century ago, Max Weber, a founder of sociology, observed that the Protestant work ethic was what had made northern Europe and America rich. Recently, Niall Ferguson, a British historian at New York University, argued that today's economic stagnation in Germany and other European countries owes much to the decline of religious belief and church attendance during the past four decades. The Protestant work ethic, he thinks, is dead.

If there is a link between religion and economic performance, then economists ought to have something to say about it. To test the connection, however, economists need figures, ideally covering many countries and many years. This is where Mr Barro and Ms McCleary come in. They have collected data from surveys of religious belief for 59 countries in the 1980s and 1990s—whether people say they believe in God, heaven and hell, and whether they attend services at least once a month—and have tried to tease out whether these have any direct effect on GDP growth....