Study Ties Hell, Economics (Editorial)

Occasionally, a curious article turns up in a seemingly unlikely place.

In the July issue of The Regional Economist, a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank at St. Louis, an article by Kevin L. Kliesen and Frank A. Schmid looked at how religious factors can help explain economic growth.

A belief in eternal punishment — that is, hell — tends to mean less corruption, and less corruption tends to mean a higher per capita income.

Using a 1990-1993 World Values Survey, which asked people in 35 countries whether they believed in hell, and an international survey about corruption by Transparency International, a chart was developed that shows there is a tendency for countries in which a larger percentage of the population believes in hell to have lower levels of corruption.

A second chart plots the GDP-per-capita rankings of the 35 countries against their Corruption Percentage Index and shows a tendency for countries with relatively low levels of corruption to have relatively high levels of per-capita GDP.

The two charts suggest, the authors said, that if all factors are constant, the more religious a country, the less corruption it will have and the higher its per capita income will be.

Adam Smith long argued that in societies where there is a widespread belief in God, the values of honesty and integrity are more prevalent, the article said.

German sociologist Max Weber argued that the work ethic inspired by the Protestant Reformation helped to explain the rise of capitalism in Western Europe and America.

In a paper last year, economists Robert Barro and Rachel McCleary provided evidence that church attendance and economic growth are negatively related, but a belief in hell — their measure of religious fervor — was positively related to increased economic growth.

The correlation is far from perfect. The nation with the highest belief in hell is Turkey, where 85 percent of the people believe there?s a hell. Yet the per capita income there is $8,590. The nation with the highest per capita income is the United States at $34,320. And the U.S. is second highest in a belief in hell at 71 percent.

In Denmark, however, only 10 percent of the people believe in hell, but the per capita income is $29,000.

Moral values and ethical standards do matter, but when trying to figure out why some countries are rich and why some countries are poor, we still think perhaps it may be wiser to look at more traditional measures: population, labor productivity, education, inflation and savings and investment rates, along with the economic system and social institutions.