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On April 30, Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) and Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program, along with Gallup and the Center for Open Science, released the first findings of their ongoing worldwide survey of human flourishing. The press usually ignores such studies, but the scale and results of this survey have drawn the attention, including from the New York Times and Atlantic. 

The survey’s delineation of “flourishing” includes health, happiness, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security, and included interviews with over 200,000 people in 22 countries, chosen for geographic, cultural, and religious diversity. It will re-interview each year for the next five years and may be the widest such survey ever attempted.  

Among its findings are that, while countries vary, worldwide men and women report similar results and younger people are now sadly doing worse than their elders. 

One finding of particular interest to Providence readers is that those who attend religious services tend to flourish more. Unlike other trends the survey reports, this result does not vary much from country to country, though the effect is strongest in the most secular, usually western, countries. Despite frequent press reports about the negative effects of religion on human life, this is consistent with most serious social science. Of course, there are exceptions, as with ISIS or the Taliban, but this survey reinforces the conclusion that serious religion generally correlates with human wellbeing. 

Related to this is the striking result that WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) countries do not score highest in human flourishing, in fact often the opposite. Here is one key table: 

Table 5. Ordered means of composite flourishing index (without and with financial security), with standard deviations and Gini coefficients 

   Flourishing without Financial Indicators      Flourishing with Financial Indicators     

Putting aside financial factors, the top five ranking countries are Indonesia, Mexico, Philippines, Israel, and Nigeria. With financial factors included the top five are Indonesia, Israel, Philippines, Mexico, and Poland. WEIRD countries score higher on financial security and life evaluation but poorer nations more than make up for this on meaning and purpose, and relationships. Strikingly, in general, meaning in life and composite flourishing is negatively correlated with GDP per capita. Money is not making people flourish more.  

On a personal note, when Byron Johnson, the Baylor Co-Director of the study, informally asked people to guess which country would score highest, I think I was the only one who said Indonesia. Remarkably, it turned out that it was the highest of the 22 countries in: Happiness, Life Satisfaction, Freedom, Meaning, Purpose, Relational Contentment, Satisfying Relationships, Promoting Good, Hope, Gratitude, Charitable Giving, Self-Rated Physical Health, Political Voice, and Trust. 

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, should draw attention as a case study of why high economic indicators do not necessarily correlate with human flourishing. It still has strong communal village and tribal relations, even among those who have moved to the big cities. Its state doctrine of pancasila emphasizes monotheism, not Islam, and seeks to include all Indonesians in a kind of ‘civil religion.’ The country’s  hegemonic form of Islam, “Islam Nusantara,” the “Islam of the Islands,” emphasizes that it is shaped by islands, coasts, ports, trade, and travel over millennia and has learned from Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and many other influences. This has produced a robust civil society. 

It is home to the world’s largest Muslim organizations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, which have perhaps 90 million and 40 million followers respectively. Both reject an Islamic state. Muhammadiyah operates over 170 universities and colleges, more than 5,000 primary and secondary schools, and around 122 hospitals. Its women’s organization ‘Aisyiyah runs 20,000 kindergartens, 568 cooperatives, 87 general hospitals, 105 maternity hospitals, 16 pediatric hospitals. NU has its base in local culture and villages and towns and has 44 universities, 6,830 Islamic boarding schools, extensive work in hospitals and clinics, and vast charitable works. 

Some results of this active civil society are:  

• According to the Pew Research Center, Indonesian Muslims have tended to be more pious than those in the Middle East.
• Another Pew survey finds that both Muslims and Christians are more likely to view religious diversity as beneficial rather than harmful.  Only 6% say that having a mix of different religions makes Indonesia a worse place to live. 
• The Charities Aid Foundation rankings of the top 10 most generous countries, measuring how much people give to charitable causes, ranks Indonesia #1 in the world, a position that it has held for the last 7 years straight. And now it ranks #1 in these initial flourishing study results. 

What might this mean for policy with respect to poorer countries ranked high in the survey? In general, that questions of human flourishing are too broad to be left to economists, although the best economists already know and support this. 

The benefits of economic growth must be offset by what might be lost in terms of tradition, community relations, gratitude, giving, trust, and religion. To quote the late Anglican theologian and economic historian, R. H. Tawney, “the existing economic order, and too many of the projects advanced for reconstructing it, break down through their neglect of the truism that, since even quite common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate them for arrangements which insult their self-respect and impair their freedom.” 

We do not need to go full-bore on Trumpian tariffs, but we must consider seriously the effects of free trade on the health industrial heartland communities, one reason that many trade unions support such tariffs. 

We do not need to adhere to Catholic integralism, but we must consider seriously the great need for human beings to be anchored in communities of traditional and transcendent meaning. 

Behind each and all these lies the vital importance of recognizing and respecting the continual vital role of religion in human lives across the globe. Any policy that neglects this will be naive and therefore self-destructive. 

The post Largest Longitudinal Study of Human Flourishing Ever Shows Religion’s Importance  first appeared on Providence.