Religiosity and quality of life in South Africa

Using nationally representative survey data, this paper explores the relationship between religiosity and quality of life. Three indicators of religiosity are used: (i) frequency of attendance at religious services or meetings, (ii) orthodoxy of beliefs in relation to Biblical teachings and (iii) religious denomination. Quality of life (QoL) is measured in terms of (i) household access to modern conveniences, (ii) self-assessed life satisfaction and (iii) level of satisfaction with government institutions. The data shows a significant but not very strong statistical relationship between religiosity and QoL. People who attend religious meetings most frequently and who hold the most orthodox religious views are thus more likely to have access to modern conveniences and to be satisfied with their lives. Satisfaction with government, however, tends to be highest amongst nominally religious people and lowest amongst both the most orthodox and the least religious.     

Social,behavioral, and biological factors,and sex differences in mortality

Few studies have examined whether sex differences in mortality are associated with different distributions of risk factors or result from the unique relationships between risk factors and mortality for men and women. We extend previous research by systematically testing a variety of factors, including health behaviors, social ties, socioeconomic status, and biological indicators of health. We employ the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey III Linked Mortality File and use Cox proportional hazards models to examine sex differences in adult mortality in the United States. Our findings document that social and behavioral characteristics are key factors related to the sex gap in mortality. Once we control for women’s lower levels of marriage, poverty, and exercise, the sex gap in mortality widens; and once we control for women’s greater propensity to visit with friends and relatives, attend religious services, and abstain from smoking, the sex gap in mortality narrows. Biological factors—including indicators of inflammation and cardiovascular risk—also inform sex differences in mortality. Nevertheless, persistent sex differences in mortality remain: compared with women, men have 30% to 83% higher risks of death over the follow-up period, depending on the covariates included in the model. Although the prevalence ofriskfactors differs by sex, the impact of those riskfactors on mortality is similar for men and women.     

Religious attendance and mortality: Implications for the black-white mortality crossover

This study investigates the relationships among religious attendance, mortality, and the black-white mortality crossover. We build on prior research by examining the link between attendance and mortality while testing whether religious involvement captures an important source of population heterogeneity that contributes to a crossover Using data from the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly, we find a strong negative association between attendance and mortality. Our results also show evidence of a racial crossover in mortality rates for both men and women. When religious attendance is modeled in terms of differential frailty, clear gender differences emerge. For women, the effect of attendance is race- and age-dependent, modifying the age at crossover by 10 years. For men, however; the effect of attendance is not related to race and does not alter the crossover pattern. When other health risks are modeled in terms of differential frailty, wefind neither race nor age-related effects. Overall, the results highlight the importance of considering religious attendance when examining racial and gender differences in age-specific mortality rates.     

Religious Attendance,Stress, and Happiness in South Korea: Do Gender and Religious Affiliation Matter?

Is religious attendance positively associated with happiness in South Korea? If yes, can religious attendance buffer against the harmful effect of stress on happiness? Moreover, do gender and religious affiliation modify these associations? This study addresses these questions with data from 2009 Korean General Social Survey which is a nationally representative survey (N = 1,599). Ordinal least square regression analyses reveal that although the effect size is relatively small, religious attendance is associated with a higher level of happiness in South Korea. However, this positive effect holds only for women and only for Protestants. In addition, an interaction effect between religious attendance and stress is observed for women only; the negative association between stress and happiness is weakened among those women who report more frequent church attendance. In this regard, a high level of church attendance buffers against the deleterious effects of stress on happiness for women. I discuss the implications of the findings with regard to theories about religion, mental health, and gender in South Korean context.     

Cigarette Smoking and All-Cause and Cause-Specific Adult Mortality in the United States

This study illuminates the association between cigarette smoking and adult mortality in the contemporary United States. Recent studies have estimated smoking-attributable mortality using indirect approaches or with sample data that are not nationally representative and that lack key confounders. We use the 1990–2011 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files to estimate relative risks of all-cause and cause-specific mortality for current and former smokers compared with never smokers. We examine causes of death established as attributable to smoking as well as additional causes that appear to be linked to smoking but have not yet been declared by the U.S. Surgeon General to be caused by smoking. Mortality risk is substantially elevated among smokers for established causes and moderately elevated for additional causes. We also decompose the mortality disadvantage among smokers by cause of death and estimate the number of smoking-attributable deaths for the U.S. adult population ages 35+, net of sociodemographic and behavioral confounders. The elevated risks translate to 481,887 excess deaths per year among current and former smokers compared with never smokers, 14 % to 15 % of which are due to the additional causes. The additional causes of death contribute to the health burden of smoking and should be considered in future studies of smoking-attributable mortality. This study demonstrates that smoking-attributable mortality must remain a top population health priority in the United States and makes several contributions to further underscore the human costs of this tragedy that has ravaged American society for more than a century.     

宗教参与对我国高龄老人死亡风险的影响分析

根据中国高龄老人健康长寿跟踪调查数据(1998～2005年),利用Cox比例风险模型考察宗教参与对高龄老人死亡风险的影响机制,深入分析人口学特征、肌体健康、心理健康、健康行为及社会经济支持这五类因素在宗教参与和死亡风险关系中的交互作用,以此对西方文献中相关的4种理论模型进行实证检验。结果表明,宗教参与对死亡风险存在一定程度的影响,但是控制其他因素则会削弱这种影响,其中肌体健康因素所代表的"替代性机制"能够将两者关系的显著作用完全消除。     

Does Religion Make You Healthier and Longer Lived? Evidence for Germany

Researchers in the US have consistently reported substantial—not just statistically significant—links between religious belief and practice, and improved health and longevity. In this paper we report evidence for Germany, using data from the long-running, nationally representative German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP 1984). The SOEP dataset includes multiple measures of health, plus many ‘controls’ which it is appropriate to use in assessing links between religious practice, health and longevity. These controls include personality traits known to be associated with better health (notably conscientiousness), and also the age of death of parents of the survey respondents. Initial results suggested that religious practice (church attendance) may be linked only to subjective (self-rated) measures of health, not to more objective measures. It seemed possible that results in some previous research could be due to what may be termed satisfaction bias or positivity bias; the known tendency of religious people to report higher than average satisfaction with almost all aspects of life. Further investigation indicated that relationships between church attendance and subjective measures of health were weaker, when a control for satisfaction bias was in place. However, there was countervailing evidence that the subjective measures in SOEP may actually be more not less valid than the objective measures; they are better not worse predictors of mortality. It was also clear that religious belief and church attendance are associated with health-protective behaviors and attitudes, including taking more exercise, not smoking and higher life satisfaction. At the end of the paper we estimate a structural equation model which maps links between religious practice, these protective behaviors and attitudes, and improved health outcomes.     

Supplementary child health services. Part III. Infant welfare centres

The findings of the Maternity Survey on the use of infant welfare centres were confirmed in the Follow-up Survey carried out two years later. 68.7% of all the survey mothers used centres, and the children of manual workers (72.0%) and of the black-coated workers (71.4%) were taken more than those of the professional and salaried (59.7 %).

Attendance at centres was more common in the towns than in the rural areas, where mothers often had to travel considerable distances to centres.

The more experienced mothers with several children used centres less than the primiparae. Even so, 61.8% of the wives of manual workers with four or more children had taken their babies at some time before the second birthday.

The average date of first attendance was about 7 weeks after confinement, except for the agricultural workers' wives who made their first attendance at 12.6 weeks. The mothers who intended to use the centres usually made an early start in the first two or three months. Those who made their initial visit later probably came for advice on specific disorders or else for diphtheria immunisation.

Those who made frequent and regular attendances usually started at an early date. There was a general falling off in attendance as the children grew older; over one-third of urban working class mothers with less than four children who used centres at all, did not attend once in the second year, and the attendances of the remainder were less frequent. This lapsing represents a failure of the child health services which needs to be remedied.

The group of working class women who made frequent and regular use of centres even after the first birthday appeared to be among the most conscientious and careful mothers, according to the health visitors' estimates of the bodily care of their babies, and their records on post-natal care and diphtheria immunisation. More detailed studies are required to discover whether other factors have any appreciable influence on continued attendance at centres.

When more adequate premises and more staff become available the problem of persuading a larger proportion of mothers to continue making regular attendances at centres will have to be faced.     

Family Life History and Late Mid‐Life Mortality in Norway

Using data on all Norwegians born 1935–68, we analyze the associations between mortality and a combined indicator of fertility and marital or partnership status and history. The focus is on ages 40–73 and the years 1980–2008 (30 million person‐years of observations and 117,000 deaths). Among men in first marriages, the childless have 36 percent higher mortality than those with two or more children. The corresponding figure for women is 61 percent. The never‐married have higher mortality and are differentiated even more by parenthood status. Thus, childless never‐married men and women have mortality three times as high as those who are married and have two or more children. The apparent advantage associated with having at least two children is smallest among men who divorced before their oldest child's tenth birthday. Having step‐children has no association with mortality for those without natural children but is associated with higher mortality among the parous.     

The three R's: Residence,religion, and reproduction

Survey research data collected in Rhode Island over a three year interval are used to test six propositions: 1) Suburbanites have higher family size than central city residents. 2) Any differences in family size between Catholics and non-Catholics are larger in central city than in suburban areas. 3) Within religious categories, suburbanites attend church more regularly. 4) Among Catholics, suburban residence is associated with less frequent Communion reception. 5) Among Catholics, church attendance frequency is positively associated with family size. Among non-Catholics no relationship exists. 6) The frequency with which Catholics receive Communion is more strongly associated positively with family size than is church attendance frequency. Propositions 1, 2 and 5 are rejected. Propositions 4 and 6 are accepted. Proposition 3 is accepted for non-Catholics only.     

Selective Mortality During the Khmer Rouge Period in Cambodia

Aspects of the long‐term demographic impact of genocide during the period of the Khmer Rouge (1975–79) in Cambodia are analyzed. Mortality data for siblings from the Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey in 2000 demonstrate that excess mortality was extremely high and heavily concentrated during 1974–80. The study also shows that mortality was highly selective during that period. Adult males were the most likely to die, indicating that violent death played a major role. Individuals with an urban or educated background were more likely to die. Mortality by religious background is also assessed. Infant and early childhood mortality was very high during the period and was as prevalent in urban areas and among children born to educated mothers as in rural areas and among the less educated.     

Donating Time or Money? The Effects of Religiosity and Social Capital on Civic Engagement in Qatar

Few studies have examined the role of religiosity and social capital on civic engagement in the context of a Muslim country. In this paper, we explore the impact of religiosity and social capital on charitable donations and volunteerism in Qatar. Drawing on a nationally representative survey from Qatar, we consider various attitudinal and behavioral measures for capturing religiosity and social capital. The results indicate that, even after controlling for a wide range of demographic variables, behavioral measures have a stronger effect than attitudes. Individuals who regularly perform daily prayers are more likely to donate than those individuals who simply describe themselves as religious. Similarly, individuals who are more active in their neighborhood engagement are more likely to volunteer than those who merely report high levels of social trust. These results suggest that when it comes to the relationship between religiosity, social capital and civic engagement, individual behavior is much more predictive than attitudes alone. We also find that even in the case of Qatar, where citizen wealth has rapidly increased in the last few decades, there is little evidence of substitution effects: citizens do not appear to trade-off or substitute between time and money. Instead, more religious and active citizens are likely to do both.     

“The shock of widowhood”? Evidence from an Italian population (Parma, 1989–2000)

The purpose of our study is to assess the influence of socio-demographic factors on overall and cause-specific mortality of elderly people of Parma aged 65. In particular, the paper aims at exploring the relation between mortality and living arrangement in association with marital status. Data were obtained from the General Registry Office of Parma and from the death certificates issued by the Local Health District from 1989 to 2000. A logistic regression was performed using longitudinal data. In the male population, living alone and being never married appears to be the worst condition, while living with the wife repsresents a caring situation. In the female population, the major risk of death is associated to living with others than a spouse, while a reduced risk was detected for widows living alone. This was a common and shared result for both overall mortality and many of the causes of death here considered. The condition of widows and widowers living alone does not appear to constitute a particularly serious risk among the elderly population of Parma. Yet, in the female population the association between living alone and the status of widow seems playing a protective role. This result should be interpreted in the light of the social policy of services and support for the elderly pursued by local authorities.     

Marital fertility and religion in Spain, 1985 and 1999

Since the transition to democracy in Spain in 1975, both total fertility and rates of church attendance of Catholics have dropped dramatically. In this study the 1985 and 1999 Spanish Fertility Surveys were used to investigate whether the significance of religion for fertility behaviour -- current family size and the spacing of births -- changed between the survey dates. In the 1985 survey, family size was similar for those Catholics who actively participated in religious activities and those who, though nominally Catholic, were not active participants. By 1999, the family size of the latter was lower and comparable to the family size of those without religious affiliation. These findings accord with the declines in both church attendance and fertility in Spain. The small groups of Protestants and Muslims had the highest fertility. Women in inter-faith unions had relatively low fertility.     

How Religiosity Shapes Rejection of Homosexuality Across the Globe

ABSTRACT

This study investigates to what extent different dimensions of religiosity are differentially related to rejection of homosexuality in countries around the world and, moreover, to what extent these relationships can be explained by particular mediators: authoritarianism and traditional gender beliefs. The theoretical framework includes in particular socialization and integration theories. Hypotheses are tested by employing multilevel models, using data from the World Values Survey, covering 55 countries around the world for the period 2010–2014. The results indicate that every dimension of religiosity has a positive relationship with rejection of homosexuality, rejecting some of our hypotheses: those who adhere to any denomination more often attend religious services and have stronger religious particularistic beliefs, or those who are more religiously salient do reject homosexuality more strongly. Sobel tests and bootstrapping procedures indicate that the relationships between the dimensions of religiosity and rejection of homosexuality are partially explained by authoritarianism and traditional gender beliefs.     

Social Tolerance and Economic Development

Trust is a social capital with burgeoning research interests from diverse disciplines in the social sciences, behavioral sciences and health fields. Despite these abundant literatures, trust research in sub-Saharan Africa is limited. The overwhelming area of interest on trustworthiness have also been focused on the trustee, with little consideration of the extent to which individuals perceive themselves to be trustworthy and the factors that may predict trustworthiness. The present study examined the contributions of personality and religiosity to propensity to trust and trustworthiness in a Nigerian student sample. Data was obtained using self-report measures of the Big Five Personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience), religiosity (operationalised as attendance to religious activities), trust, and trustworthiness. Results showed that agreeableness predicted increased trust, whereas conscientiousness and neuroticism predicted lower trust. Neither trust nor trustworthiness was significantly predicted by extraversion and openness to experience. Greater trustworthiness was predicted by high agreeableness, while high conscientiousness predicted reduced trustworthiness. Neuroticism did not predict trustworthiness. Religious involvement did not predict trust, but greater frequency of attendance to religious activities predicted lower trustworthiness. Findings suggest that agreeableness and conscientiousness may be important traits of interest in relation to trust and trustworthiness among youth in the sub-Saharan African context. Externalities of religion such as regular attendance to religious worship may not result to trust and may not foster trustworthiness. Researchers should give more attention to this area of research in order to clearly show their implications for social policy in developing countries.

     

The relative importance of ethnicity and religion in predicting attitudes towards gays and lesbians

Using data from a sample of college students from several campuses throughout the United States, this research examines whether ethnic differences (African Americans versus European Americans) in attitudes toward gays and lesbians are a function of religious attendance. Multiple regressions were run separately for attitudes towards lesbians and attitudes toward gay men. When predicting attitudes toward lesbians, ethnic differences were present in the absence of religious attitudes; however, when religious attitudes were entered into the model, ethnic differences disappeared. In predicting attitudes toward gay men, ethnic differences were never present, while religious attitudes were always statistically significant. We conclude that differences in attitudes toward homosexuals in general, and gay men specifically, are not necessarily a function of ethnicity but possibly of religious attendance and the effect of the "Black church." We end with a discussion of the link between ethnicity, religion, HIV/AIDS, and heterosexism in the African American community.     

Nondrinker Mortality Risk in the United States

The literature has shown that people who do not drink alcohol are at greater risk for death than light to moderate drinkers, yet the reasons for this remain largely unexplained. We examine whether variation in people’s reasons for nondrinking explains the increased mortality. Our data come from the 1988–2006 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality File (N = 41,076 individuals age 21 and above, of whom 10,421 died over the follow-up period). The results indicate that nondrinkers include several different groups that have unique mortality risks. Among abstainers and light drinkers the risk of mortality is the same as light drinkers for a subgroup who report that they do not drink because of their family upbringing, and moral/religious reasons. In contrast, the risk of mortality is higher than light drinkers for former drinkers who cite health problems or who report problematic drinking behaviors. Our findings address a notable gap in the literature and may inform social policies to reduce or prevent alcohol abuse, increase health, and lengthen life.     

Moderate Alcohol Consumption and the Risk of Mortality

There has been a growing consensus that moderate consumption of alcohol is associated with a lower risk of mortality and that this association is probably causal. However, a recent review article has raised a serious challenge to this consensus. In short, it determined that most prior research in this area committed serious misclassification errors; furthermore, among those studies that were free of these misclassification errors, no support for a protective role of alcohol consumption was found. This article reexamines the issue using prospective data for more than 124,000 persons interviewed in the U.S. National Health Interview Surveys of 1997 through 2000 with mortality follow-up through 2002 using the Linked Mortality File. The study involves about 488,000 person-years. Controlling for a variety of covariates, this study finds that compared with nondrinkers, those who consume a moderate amount of alcohol have lower all-cause and CHD mortality. The fact that the current study has taken care to avoid the pitfalls of some earlier studies and still finds that those who consume a moderate amount of alcohol have lower all-cause mortality and CHD mortality lends credence to the argument that the relationship is causal.     

Religiously unaffiliated Canadians: Sex,age, and regional variations

Canada has been viewed traditionally as a preponderantly Christian country, with persons who are not affiliated with religion perceived as a deviant minority. Lack of affiliation with organized religion may be operationalized in a number of ways. In Canada in 1985, of all persons over the age of 15, about one in ten reported no religion. An additional 20% may be considered to be unaffiliated, in that they report they never attend church; and an additional 10% report that they go to church less than once a year. Depending upon the indicator used, therefore, nearly one in four Canadians may be considered to be religiously unaffiliated.Data from the 1985 General Social Survey (N=11110) are analyzed by sex, age and region. Being unaffiliated with organized religion is consistently more common among men than among women. The highest proportions of unaffiliated persons occur within the 25–34 year age group, with the lowest generally occuring in the 55–64 age group. The Atlantic provinces contain the lowest proportions of unaffiliated persons. Proportions increase westward to reach a high in British Columbia, where the percentage of non-affiliates is about twice the national average. Implications of the incidence of religious non-affiliation are discussed with reference to future research.