Randomizing Religion: the Impact of Protestant Evangelism on Economic Outcomes

Introduction

A literature dating back at least to Adam Smith and Max Weber has argued that religiosity is associated with a set of characteristics that promote economic success, including diligence, thriftiness, trust, and cooperation (Iannaccone 1998; Iyer 2016). More recent research has linked religiosity to positive outcomes in domains such as physical health (Ellison 1991), crime rates (Freeman 1986), drug and alcohol use (Gruber and Hungerman 2008), income (Gruber 2005), and educational attainment (Freeman 1986; Gruber 2005).

Other studies have argued for negative economic effects of some aspects of religiosity due to a focus on otherworldliness (Weber 1958 in his discussion of Catholicism) and substitution toward church attendance away from production (Barro and McCleary 2003). Despite extensive research, claims that religion causes outcomes remain controversial, in part because people choose their religion. Naturally occurring religious affiliation is likely to be correlated with unobserved personal characteristics, which may be the true drivers of the observed correlations. Iannaccone (1998, 1475) writes that “nothing short of a (probably unattainable) ‘genuine experiment’ will suffice to demonstrate religion’s causal impact.”

To study the causal impact of religiosity, we partnered with International Care Ministries (ICM), an evangelical Protestant antipoverty organization founded by Filipino pastors that operates through a local network of pastors in the Philippines, to conduct an evaluation that randomly assigned invitations to attend Christian theology and values training. There are 285 million evangelical Christians in the world, comprising 13% of Christians and 36% of Protestants (Hackett and Grim 2011).1 ICM is representative of an important sector that attempts to generate religiosity while alleviating poverty.