All right. Jesus, can you get the heat out in there? Oh, man. Nice and warm.
Don't get sweat. I'll tell you what. It's Joel Rogers and his father, Wayne. Yeah, so we're about to walk into Grace's life back to church and worship with my parents and my brother also.
My sister's about to be here running with the ladies' usual. So, yeah. We're in McCalla, Alabama, about 20 minutes outside of Birmingham, on a very warm Sunday morning. Good, I was going to go to high school, man.
Wow, crazy. It's a, I would say, a fairly typical evangelical service. It used to be an old gem, and so the setting is a little different than a traditional church. There are no windows in here, anything, but there is a praise band up on the stage.
Sometimes there's a choir that choirs off right now for summer. It's Lori, Joel's mom. She has a lot of friends here. How's it going?
How's it going? Good to see you. All right. Hello, Mr.
Edwards. This is kind of like the fellowship area, and, you know, it's fun to just see everybody in here and you get to see people that might not come to your service. Most people call it hanging out at the church, they call it fellowship. So, the translation.
That's the church. Right. Glad to be here. Let's stand together this morning.
We want to go to the Lord and prayer today. Father God, we bow our hearts before you, and we are so thankful God to see you. We went to church with Joel Rogers' family this morning because of an email he sent us. Joel works as a tax accountant in Birmingham.
Here's what he wrote. Being devout Southern Baptists, Joel I callousized Southern, my parents have steadfastly been giving 10% of their income to the church their whole lives. I recently voiced my opinion that I thought that was too much to give, and my parents and I got into an argument. After a little back and forth, my parents conceded that tithing at 10% may not be the exact amount God expects, but my mother said something that stopped me.
She said the 10% they give to the church makes them happier than anything else they spend their money on. Now Joel goes on here. I've read that people who go to religious institutions consistently are happier than their counterparts. The economist inside me says that money not given to the church would make a non-tither happier all else equal.
So here's what Joel wants to know. Will forfeiting 10% of your income for the right to go to a church and experience a church congregation? Will that make you happier or less happy overall? That is the question we'll try to answer on today's show.
Really Joel is asking two questions related, but separate. One is whether giving away money, in this case to a religious institution, makes you happier. The other is whether religion itself makes you happier. Here are Joel's parents again.
I think the world is a better place because of our little bit of tithing. By tithing I am pleasing God. I'm doing something that God would want me to do, so that gives me happiness in that way too. And even Joel can see how giving money to the church can have a personal upside.
I mean if I think back to another thing that's meant $20 like a t-shirt or something, which one would bring me more for a long tappiness? I think that the answer is probably giving money away. But as we'll see in this episode, these questions are not so simple. Does it make me happy to tithe?
Would I be happier if I had that 10% in my 401k? I don't know. My 401k was like a lot better if I had all the 10% that I had given over the years. We thank you for all of this and we pray it in Jesus name and all the guys people said, Amen.
From WNYC, this is for economics radio. The podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. We are trying to answer Joel Rogers' question about whether giving money to your church makes you happier in the long run.
When you just look at survey statistics, particularly in the United States, you find a strong, consistent, positive association between rates of giving and happiness. That's Larry Janakoni. I'm a professor of economics here at Chapman University. I'm a Christian and I would classify myself as an evangelical Christian.
Janakoni has studied the history of religious giving, including tithing. Tithing literally comes from the word 10th and traditionally meant 10% of something usually or income paid to a church or to religion in general. The term originates as far back as the Bible in ancient Israel. The people of Israel were expected to give a tenth of their income, a tenth of their farm produce to the priesthood and to also help the poor.
At some points and places in history, tithing was essentially government tax, but things have evolved a good bit. In American churches, however, and when you hear the word tithing used today, you're almost always talking about contributions that are freely given to the church. Often some fixed percent of people's income, but not necessarily 10%. So in that sense, the term is something of a misnomer and its use has evolved and changed quite a bit over time.
Janakoni can tell us which American denominations are most likely to tithe. It varies some, but you hear it more among Protestants and especially conservative Protestants. Those who try to emulate or describe their behavior in terms of biblical traditions. So they're drawing on that ancient term and tradition from the Old Testament.
You hear it especially among Mormons, but you also hear it in the Assemblies of God and many theologically conservative Protestant traditions. It's not unusual to hear Baptist talking about tithing. Baptist like Wayne Rogers. I was taught to do it by my grandparents.
When I was very, very young, my granddad would give me a dollar every Sunday to give to the church. And from time I was three years old, I would take a little envelope with a dollar in it. So then as I got to be in middle school and high school and started making a little bit of my own money, my grandmother said, well Wayne, are you tithing off of that money? Larry Janakoni has some data from the general social surveys on the rate of giving among different American Christians nominations.
At the top are Assemblies of God, Seventh-day Adventists and Mormons. They average closer to six or seven percent of their income, which is really quite an astonishingly large amount. Baptists on average give three five percent of their income. Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians give about one percent.
So the trend is that the more liberal denominations give less. And then there are the Unitarians. Unitarians who by many measures are the most liberal of all give less than one percent of their income to religious causes. According to one evangelical Christian polling firm, five percent of Americans give at least ten percent of their income to a religious or other non-profit institution.
Among born-again Christians, that five percent rate jumps to twelve percent. Now, if you look at the share of religious giving in the whole charitable picture, you find that roughly two-thirds of Americans' individual contributions go to religious institutions. We could talk at great length about what those institutions do with all that money, maybe some day we will. But today, we're trying to answer Joel Rogers' question, which is, what does all that giving do for the giver?
Larry Janakoni. The data that we have suggests a pretty strong positive association between various measures of happiness and well-being on the one hand and other measures of religious involvement, including giving on the other. Okay, that sounds fairly persuasive. The giving and happiness go hand in hand.
But as Janakoni is careful to point out, there are a number of caveats here. Just because giving and happiness go together doesn't mean that the giving causes, the happiness, could be that happier people are more likely to give money. It could be that having more money makes you happier, therefore more able to give, or that being happy makes you likely to make more money, which makes you more able to give. In other words, it's not so easy to establish firm, causal proof, as our listener, Joel Rogers is looking for, as to whether giving money to your church makes you happier.
The answer is complicated. They actually seek the two different elements of research to have done in religion. That's John Gruber. I'm a professor at economics at MIT.
I grew up in a Jewish household with a very religious mother and a not very religious father, like, you know, mom's or ranting. So we were, you know, we were reformed, but pretty serious about it. Are you a religious person yourself? No, I'm not.
Gruber is, however, very much interested in the questions we're asking today. But with causality in this realm being elusive, Gruber had to get a little creative. This is my first paper on religion. It's called, it's my favorite title of paper I've written, it's called Pay or Pray.
And it was actually been inspired by an episode from my childhood, which is my father. He's a finance professor. And so he would sort of become Treasurer of our temple. And he said, oh, now I'm a church of temple.
Oh good, that means I can go less. Now that wasn't about giving and going, that was about time and going. But nonetheless, it sort of implied that trade-off. The question Gruber was asking in this paper is a subtle one.
Does giving money to a religious institution compliment going to religious services or act as a substitute? This is well known economics that when you give a bigger tax break to charitable giving people give more, but they know and never looked well what to do their attendance. And I found that if you give a bigger tax break, travel giving people give more and go less. That is their substitute.
Gruber's father, in other words, was more norm than exception. Gruber found that every 1% rise in charitable giving led to a 1.1% decline in religious attendance. But what about someone like Joel Rogers' parents? They give their 10% to the church and feel really good about it.
Is it the giving that feels good? Or is it the going to church that feels good? That would go into church and matter for their happiness and their well-being. So they should maybe even give less and just go more.
Coming up on Trich and I'm with Radio. Does attending religious services make people better off? When I find it's an incredibly strong correlation. That basically people are more likely to have higher incomes, have higher education, have more stable marriages.
You're less likely to be on welfare, essentially be more successful along any sort of economic measure you want to use. One more thing, if you do not already subscribe to this Freconomics Radio podcast, we believe you should just sign up for free at iTunes and you'll get the next episode in your sleep. From WNYC, this is Freconomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner.
Today we're in church in McCallough, Alabama. Praise God. Thank you. Thank you for your love for us that never gives up.
With Joel Rogers and his family. Joel's parents give 10% of their income to their church. Here's what Joel wanted to know. Will forfeiting 10% of your income for the right to go to a church and experience a church congregation?
Will that make you happier? We're less happy. We're real. We've already established that the connection between donating to a church and happiness can be hard to prove.
But what about the connection between happiness and religion itself? So I came up with what I thought was a fairly convincing idea for this. That's John Gruber again. He's an MIT economist who's tried to measure whether religion makes people better off.
As your listeners know, develop an acalplic case means finding some factor that changes religiosity but doesn't change happiness. You know, the fact that it's a correlation that religious people are happier. Could just be religious people have higher incomes, religious people live in parts of the country that are happier, whatever. Or it could be that happier people tend to be more likely to participate in religious services.
You don't worry about what we call reverse causality, but the happier people could be more like a big thing. Gruber began by looking into the research conducted by sociologists like Rodney Stark. One of the findings in this field is that people are more religious if they're in an area that's more densely composed of their religion. So basically if you are a Catholic in Boston, you're more religious than a Catholic in Minneapolis.
If you're a Lutheran in Minneapolis, you're more a Lutheran in Boston. Now why was that religious clustering important for trying to measure the impact of religiosity? That was given to me. That was well documented literature.
And so when I said as well, if you look at who is where, that largely a function of what ways of immigrants came over what time. And certain ethnic backgrounds have certain religions associated with them. Alright, so let me say this. I believe you because you sound believable and you have good credentials.
You have great credentials. But as a layperson, and in this case, I speak not only for myself, but I probably represent most of our listeners, that methodology as a means to extricate the causal relationship of attending religion, changing your life. It's a little, I don't know how to say it. Yeah, distant is a great word.
So before we get into the findings, just persuade me a little bit more in as plain English as you can, why this variable and why this methodology is worthwhile and believable to you? The problem, because there's lots of things that correlate with both. So basically, why do I believe my solution? Well, essentially the part of my solution is saying, Polish people in Boston are much more religious than Polish people in Minneapolis.
Likewise, Swedish people in Boston, or otherwise pretty similar, are less religious than Swedish people in Minneapolis. Now, there's no great reason for that. Other than the fact they're not around people with their ethnicity, and not their religion. Moreover, you might say, well, maybe, I don't know, maybe Polish people in Boston are just different in some way.
But then let me go one step further. You might say, okay, well, look, John, that's a learned good, but you know, Poles and Fledon identical, maybe Poles and Boston are different than Poles in Minneapolis, okay? Maybe, you know, they're different from other dimensions. Well, the way I can test that is I can look at participation in other activities.
So if you're really worried that cheap, Poles and Boston are just different, they should be more likely to be in other clubs or Pacific activities or other similar things, and they're not. So except for being more religious, Poles and Swedes in Boston are no different. Now, look, is this a bold proof argument? No.
I mean, let me ask about the paper's economics, or this paper was not accepted at the top economic journal. Okay, the top economic journal had enough concerns that this was not real, that, you know, paper's published in sort of, so is this the cleanest paper ever written? No, not by a long shot, but I'm pretty convinced. Right.
Okay. So you find that the clustering of national identity has something to do with religious participation. Exactly. Therefore, I then look at the clustering of ethnic identity also correlate with economic outcome.
And what I find is an incredibly strong correlation. That people who are clustered with others of their ethnicity are more likely to be more successful at higher incomes, have higher education, have more stable marriages, you're less likely to be on welfare, essentially be more successful along any sort of economic measure you want to use. And just persuade me that it's the religious participation that you feel is a causal driver in that, as opposed to, let's say, the ethnic clustering itself. In other words, I can imagine that when there are a lot of Poles in Boston, there are network effects that might aid education, health, income outcomes, the way that potentially religious observation does.
Right. And the way I'll convince you that is two things. One is I want to say, what I do is I actually, I can look at what happens to Poles when there are a lot of Italians in Boston. So essentially because they share the same religion, right, but not much else.
But I can actually ask, what happens not just the Poles and what are Poles in Boston? I can control for that. I can essentially say, let me get rid of your own ethnic entity. That's what happens to a lot of other groups that happen to be Catholic in Boston.
And so that way it's not just asking, look at the other people of your ethnicity. That's the other people of other ethnicities that share your religion. And then I also have the fact that we don't like the statement anything else. So it looks like it's offering to the religion margin.
Excellent. Okay, good. Okay, good. Okay, that's all I have to say.
That was one of our, I love these, like this show is meant to be primarily entertainment, but we love to teach when we can. And to me, that was like a great teaching sequence there because I think anybody will hear that and really understand the way that someone like you tries to approach a question like that. So that was, that was. Yeah.
And look, and I think you don't have to point to religious understand that, you know, life is not black and white and there's not sometimes as cleaner answers than others. Sometimes we have a random eye trial. Sometimes we don't. And then life, you've got to decide the question important enough that you want to answer it, even if you don't have the clean answer you'd like.
So let's say I accept that finding that religious participation doesn't just correlate to better outcomes in life, but actually helps produce them higher levels of education and income. Like you said, lower levels of welfare, receipt, disability and divorce. What if you have any idea are the mechanisms by which you think religious participation leads to these outcomes? So there's essentially several possibilities.
The sort of least exciting possibility is through educational route, which is maybe when a lot of Catholic school is more Catholic school. Now, I don't think that's it, but that is one possible route. I think another route and that I probably find most likely is the church is essentially a social network that essentially provides kind of insurance. Against that thing's happening to you.
And that it provides a place where you can go and network. If you lose a job, you can, that people who can help you out if times get tough, loan you money, whatever. Are you really times aren't tough if you're a successful business person? Theoretically, you expand even more if you're successful.
Right? Exactly. The churches are the social capital inside, are major social capital society. And therefore, if you're around more people like you, that's a bigger community.
That's sort of a what we call the economic, the bigger market. There's more people around who can help you out. If you're growing, help you out if you're hurting. It's really sort of a social insurance notion of a church.
And then finally, and most accurately, they itself may produce better outcomes. I know a number of people are very religious. It gives them a calmness and a certainty that allows them to be successful. I'm curious if along the lines of along the way of doing this research, if your research persuaded you to either get involved or want to get involved more in something resembling religious participation since it seems to be pretty good for you, or were you convinced that you already doing well enough and didn't need it?
You know, when I probably had the typical liberal skeptics view of religion, which is what happens in a way, open to the masses. You know, religion is supposed to be worse than Middle East, religion is basically bad. And I think I really changed my views on that. I really gained appreciation for the role of religion and playing people-wise, appreciation for my friends, whole spectrum of the role.
But it didn't really affect my religiosity. I get something that just has to come to or not, a temple as a kid. And it's just not, you know, I kind of tried and I just didn't feel it. So I didn't mean it.
And I supported the three churches. Interesting. I'm very supportive of her. I think it's great for her.
She's getting faith in doing that. Okay, so does religion itself make people better off? As best as John Gruber can tell, the answer is quite possibly. Now, if that's the case, you can see why some people are willing to donate a considerable chunk of their income to their religious institution, which, if you follow this line of questioning through to its natural conclusion, might lead you to think, well, okay, if I'm tithing money to my church, and I'm not better off in the long run, maybe I should get my money back.
It turns out that some churches do offer that money back guarantee. That we are challenging you to take our 90-day Todd challenge. And in 90 days, if you don't feel like God has blessed you, if you don't feel like God has done what his word has said, if you believe God's a liar, but here's what we'll do. We'll refund every dime that you gave during that 90-day period.
No questions I ask. Perry Noble is the senior pastor of New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. I think the thing about the 90-day Todd challenge is it just tells people, hey, we're smoking what we're selling here. I believe we've had over 4,000 people total sign up for the challenge since we've started, and between 15 and 20 people total since we've started it a couple years ago have ever asked for their money back.
I guess John Gruber, the economist, what he thought of this offer. Well, I mean, I think it's quite transparent. I think it's terribly misleading. I think that, you know, if we go with a theory that religious participation is good for you because it builds state and security, the last thing you want to do is have people eating track.
No, and say I got to really score me at the last three months, I want my money back. That seems to promote a transactional of your religion, which is damaging. And I don't find it helpful at all. We also ran the Tithing Refund pass through Rogers family.
They didn't like it anymore than John Gruber. I think that's completely nuts. I mean, it's not seers. It's very different when you give to the church, but once I give the money away, I expect them to do something good with it, and I don't want the money back.
God says, give a tithe, test me and see if I will pour out blessings. It does not say what type of blessing, and I don't think the blessings have to necessarily be. In any way that we can measure it. So I don't see how a church could say that they could have a money back guarantee.
Seems like a very selfish reason to give. The only reason you're giving is to get back. So I think it just takes away from the whole heart of... You do get an itemized tax deduction though, for giving me a charge.
So good. 30%. Hey, Pac-Ass listeners. On Monday, August 4th, I will be doing a live Twitter chat with iBooks at 4PM Eastern Time, 1PM Pacific Time.
I will answer your questions about our new book, Think Like a Freak, about Freak and Comics Radio, anything you want to throw at me. We would like you to send us your questions ahead of time, tweet them to iBooks, use the hashtag Ask Freakonomics. Again, that's Monday, August 4th, 4PM Eastern Time, 1PM Pacific Time at iBooks, hashtag Ask Freakonomics. And next week on the podcast, we revisit one of our favorite episodes, and ask a simple question.
Is your name... You're destined. Yo, can you give us your full name? Yeah, sure.
Yo, Xing Hano, Augustus, Eisner, Alexander, Weiser, Knuckles, Chairman, Janko, Connolly. Everybody's got a name. What does yours say about you? That's next time on Freakonomics Radio.
Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes David Herman, Greg Rosalski, Greta Cohn, Burele Lamb, Susie Lechtenberg, and Chris Bannon. If you want more Freakonomics Radio, you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or go to Freakonomics.com, where you'll find lots of radio, a blog, the books, and more.