Religiously Active People Are Happier than Others, Pew Research Center Finds

A Pew research study has found that people who are regularly religiously active are happier and more engaged in civic matters than people who are religiously unaffiliated or religiously inactive.

The Pew Research Center conducted surveys in more than two dozen countries to measure people’s happiness, health, and civic engagement in correlation to their religious involvement.

According to the results, “This analysis finds that in the U.S. and many other countries around the world, regular participation in a religious community clearly is linked with higher levels of happiness and civic engagement.”

On average, the study found that 36 percent of religiously active people in the United States self-described themselves as very-happy were as only 25 percent of religiously inactive and unaffiliated people self-described themselves as very happy. This phenomenon repeated itself in 19 out of the 26 total countries the research team surveyed. The highest levels of happiness were reported in Mexico with 71 percent of religiously active people self-describing themselves as very happy, 64 percent of religiously inactive people describing themselves as very happy and 61 percent of religiously unaffiliated people describing themselves as very happy.

Belarus reported the lowest levels of happiness with only 11 percent of religiously active and religiously inactive…