Christians happiest people in Europe: survey

8/12/2011

A study of the effect of religion on happiness has revealed that Christians are the happiest people in Europe.

The study was an empirical analysis of the effect of religion on happiness, using data from three waves (2002/2003, 2004 and 2006) of the European Social Survey (ESS) covering 114,019 individuals in 24 different countries.

It provided information on personal characteristics such as gender, age, income, subjective general health, marital status, main activity, number of children and the educational level of each individual among other things.

Statistical tests looking for correlations between happiness and religion variables showed:

A significant effect of belonging to a religion on happiness. Those who belong to a religion report higher levels of happiness than those who do not.

It found that religion or denomination has a significant effect on happiness. Protestants, other Christian religions and Roman Catholics report higher happiness levels whereas Orthodox and Eastern religions report the lowest.

There seems to be a positive relationship between how religious a person is and happiness: the more religious, the happier. However, those who consider themselves “not at all religious” (0) have comparable levels of happiness to those who give themselves a 5 in the scale of religiosity.

Frequency of attendance at services is likewise positively correlated with happiness: those who attend religious services every day say they are happier than those who never attend.

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