Material insecurity and religiosity: A causal analysis

Some cultural evolutionary models predict that under stressful reductions of well-being, individuals will be more attracted and fastidiously adhere to traditional systems of norms that promote solidarity and cooperation. As religious systems can bolster human relationships with a variety of mechanisms, the material insecurity hypothesis of religion posits that individual religiosity will increase under conditions of material insecurity. The bulk of the literature up to this point has been correlational and cross-national. Here, across 14 field sites, we examine the causal role that educational attainment and food insecurity play in religiosity. We find that years of formal education and food insecurity do not consistently contribute to individual religiosity cross-culturally. We conclude with a discussion of some theoretical and methodological implications. As a general workflow for cross-cultural causal research in the quantitative social sciences, the present work is a modest but necessary first step in reliably estimating causation in the material insecurity hypothesis of religiosity.