Relative Deprivation and Religiosity: A Cross-National Study on Income Inequality, Financial Satisfaction, and Religiosity

Abstract

The principal gauge of human, economic, and social advance among nations today is based largely on absolute measures of wealth such as Gross Domestic Product. Increasingly however, the wealth and incomes of nations and individuals are becoming less thought of in absolute terms as they are in relative terms. The current study empirically tests the relationship between inequality and financial satisfaction while concurrently examining the role of religiosity in propagating or being propagated by inequality. OLS regression analysis with individual year and country fixed effects examining 77 nations from 1981 to 2008 indicate that financial satisfaction decreases while religiosity increases as inequality within a given nation rises.