Am Ricely and Chickenly Yours
Tom Rees blogs about new research from Lydia Manning of Miami University, who analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study:
Manning’s analysis looked at the original 1992 survey, focusing on the 6,000-odd people who reported doing over 100 hours of voluntary work a year.
What she found was that women were much more likely to be volunteers—15 times more likely, in fact. Once she took this into account, however, there was no relationship between religiosity and volunteering.
Now, there are a few deficiencies in this study—most notably that religion was only measured as affiliation (are you a Catholic, Protestant, or whatever). Previous studies have shown that religious service attendance is, unsurprisingly, a better predictor of volunteering.
But Manning’s study does reinforce a general point about these sorts of correctional studies. Religious and nonreligious people are different for all sorts of reasons. You have to be very careful before assuming that religion is the cause of any differences you see.
