There has been some research on the correlation of wealth and religion. Wealth is the status of being the beneficiary or proprietor of a large accumulation of capital and economic power. Religion is a cultural system that often involves belief in supernatural forces and may intend to provide a moral system or a meaning of life.
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A study in the United States, published in the Social Forces journal and conducted by Sociology researcher Lisa A. Keister while she was at the Ohio State University, found that adherents of Judaism attained the most wealth, believers of Catholicism and mainline Protestants were in the middle, while conservative Protestants accumulated the least wealth, while in general people who attend religious services achieved more wealth than those who do not (taking into account variations of education and other factors).[1] The researcher suggests that wealth accumulation is shaped by family processes.[2]
The median net worth of people believing in the Jewish religion is calculated at 150,890 USD, while the median net worth of conservative Protestants (including Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Christian Scientists) was found at 26,200 USD.[1] The overall median in the dataset was 48,200 USD.
Another study, published in the American Journal of Sociology (AJS) by Lisa Keister after she moved to Duke University from Ohio State University, found that "religion affects wealth indirectly through educational attainment, fertility, and female labor force participation" but also found some evidence of direct effects of religion on wealth attainment.[3]
Atheism and agnosticism are labels used to describe people who believe that no god exists, do not know whether a god exists, or believe it is impossible to prove whether God exists. The term "non-religious" is used for those who have no religious affiliation.
Some studies have found correlations between wealth and lack of religious beliefs. Some countries whose populations, as a whole, do not believe in any god, are very wealthy.[4][5] It is of note that many of these affluent countries were founded on Age of Enlightenment-era, Judeo-Christian principles of equality, free thought, enterprise, religion, press, etc.[6]
It has further been theorized that wealthy countries, whether religious or non-religious, in order to become wealthy, encourage education, personal wealth, and intellectual resources, and in the course of doing so, allow freedom of thought.