Department of Economics, Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Health Econ. 2022 Jun;31(6):993-1011. doi: 10.1002/hec.4494. Epub 2022 Mar 11.
An issue that has not yet been explored in the religiosity-health literature is the macro-level effect of religiosity on health-the effect of the religiosity of a society on the absolute health of the population of that society as a whole. We address this issue using two panel datasets: The first is a time-series cross-sectional panel dataset for 17 countries from 1925 to 2000. The second is a cross-sectionally dominated panel dataset of up to 92 countries for the period 1981-2016. Our main findings are as follows: first, religiosity has a significant negative causal effect on health at the macro level; second, a substantial part of this effect can be attributed to an indirect effect via public health expenditures; and third, changes in population health do not cause significant changes in societal religiosity.
宗教与健康文献中尚未探讨的一个问题是宗教对健康的宏观影响——即一个社会的宗教信仰对该社会全体人口的绝对健康状况的影响。我们使用两个面板数据集来解决这个问题：第一个是 1925 年至 2000 年 17 个国家的时间序列横截面面板数据集。第二个是 1981 年至 2016 年期间最多 92 个国家的横截面主导面板数据集。我们的主要发现如下：首先，宗教信仰对宏观层面的健康有显著的负向因果关系；其次，这种影响的很大一部分可以归因于通过公共卫生支出产生的间接影响；第三，人口健康的变化不会导致社会宗教信仰发生重大变化。
