In 2015 a working paper revealed disenchantment that people across Eastern Europe had with their lives despite income gains made during the more than two decades since the fall of communism. The research reported low levels of happiness in the region compared to nations in other parts of the world.
“For example, Ukraine and Russia are consistently found near the bottom of rankings of life satisfaction, with scores lower than those of countries like Bangladesh and Senegal,” the authors of the study wrote in the Financial Times, while Armenians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Moldovans and Serbians were less satisfied with their lives compared to people in Peru or India.
Researchers also drew a connection between religious beliefs and happiness levels, with Eastern European Orthodox countries being unhappier “and that this variable explains around 30 percent of the happiness gap.”
Now , new research explores this connection even more deeply. A recent World Bank policy research working paper that examined global data and surveys took the study on Orthodoxy further and showed believers in this religion report the lowest happiness levels among Christian followers overall. The survey was conducted with more than 400,000 people in countries that comprise 90 percent of the world’s population.
“This paper shows that Eastern Orthodox believers are less happy compared with Catholics and Protestants using data covering more than 100 countries around the world,” the study reads. The paper also found that compared to Catholics, Protestants, and non-believers, Eastern Orthodox followers have less social capital, prefer old ideas and safe jobs, emphasize collectivism and consider God as a supreme authority figure beyond rational grasping, the authors say.
The World Bank working paper follows survey data published earlier this year from the U.S. News and World Report Best Countries report that shows countries such as Romania and Serbia as being seen as some of the most religious in Eastern Europe.
Other studies have also correlated Orthodoxy with lower happiness levels, yet the goal of the World Bank working paper is not to prove that some religions can make one happier than others, the authors say. Additionally, the new research is not trying to prove the importance of religion in our happiness, although research has shown that those embracing a religion do report higher life satisfaction.
“The purpose of this paper is to try to figure out why are different countries on different paths,” says study co-author Elena Nikolova of University College London.
The World Bank study shows that Orthodox believers in Eastern Europe tend to favor left-leaning political preferences and government involvement in the economy than other Christians. This has paved the way for communism to continue to draw support in the region despite the general atheism advocated by Marxist-Leninist philosophy. During the communist era , religion was suppressed and the Orthodox Church was deprived of legal status and property.
“We argue that some of these elements of Orthodoxy that were different as compared to Protestantism were in fact very convenient for communist elites and they nurtured those aspects that were useful for them, such as the emphasis on not questioning authorities,” Nikolova says. “These kinds of cultural differences were used in order to advance the doctrine of communism.”
This was also encouraged by the fact that communist leaders believed their doctrine should in fact replace Christianity altogether, say the authors, who reference socialism in the area as wanting to be a “messianic power” in a “sacred” state.
The study looked at a multitude of variables such as income, age, marital status correlated from two surveys, the World Value Survey, a global research projects looking at values and beliefs, and the Life in Transition Survey, an initiative of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that is interested in how transition affects the lives of people.
Nikolova says it’s important to acknowledge that religious preferences influence a country’s trajectory and this information might be very valuable at the polls.
“Eastern Orthodox believers are more left-leaning, so arguably when they go to the voting booth they will vote for more left-leaning governments,” Nikolova says. “If people have different attitudes, they will require different things at the voting booth. They will behave differently. But also if governments worldwide care about world peace and spreading democracy, (they should also care about) people of different religions (being) more likely or less likely to require democracy to organize themselves.”
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You Might Be Less Happy if You Belong to This Religion originally appeared on usnews.com
