School of Economics, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Soc Sci Med. 2011 Oct;73(8):1194-9. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.08.004. Epub 2011 Aug 26.
This paper uses a cross-country representative sample of Europeans over the age of 50 to analyse whether individuals' religiosity is associated with higher levels of well-being as a large number of studies by mental health researchers and economists have suggested. It is shown that in simple models which take no account of possible simultaneity that religiosity, as measured by the frequency of prayer, is associated with a higher level of depression. To circumvent possible reverse causality, the paper utilises a quasi-experimental/instrumental variable design which allows one to interpret the findings as causal. This leads to the conclusion that prayer has a positive effect i.e. it leads to a lower level of depressive symptoms.
本文使用了一个跨越多个国家的、年龄在 50 岁以上的欧洲代表性样本，分析了个体的宗教信仰是否与更高水平的幸福感相关，这是因为大量心理健康研究人员和经济学家的研究都表明了这一点。研究结果表明，在简单模型中，不考虑可能的同期性，宗教信仰（以祈祷频率来衡量）与更高水平的抑郁有关。为了避免可能的反向因果关系，本文采用了准实验/工具变量设计，可以将这些发现解释为因果关系。这就得出了一个结论，即祈祷具有积极的影响，即它会导致抑郁症状的降低。
