believers in poverty

and believers in richness

A Gallup report of Aug. 30, 2010 found, based on the survey in more than hundred countries, that religiosity is highly correlated to poverty: richer countries in general are less religious. Charles M. Blow of NY Times plotted on Sep.3, 2010 a good graph of the survey to show that "in general" doesn’t hold true for the United States. Sixty-five percent of Americans say that religion is an important part of their daily lives. That is compared with just 30 percent of the French, 27 percent of the British and 24 percent of the Japanese.

Not surprisingly, Croatia complies with "in general" (on the right: upper-left quarter of the Blow’s graph). I wonder, how Croatian Catholic church interprets those data. What they think of the lower-right quarter of the Blow’s graph [ROLLOVER]? Does Croatia aim to this quarter or another US-type exception? But, hey, it’s "other Christian"!

By the way, Gallup’s "in general" includes some other drastic exceptions, beside US. Vietnam, for instance. Obviously, "religion" was conceived too literally in the Gallup’s survey.

 2010-09-19 

previous