Investigating the Impact of Religion on Income Inequality
Subject Areas : Islamic theologyKeywords:
Abstract :
The present study aims to investigate the effect of the role of religion on income inequality. For this purpose, a simple economic-political model was considered and following the study of Azzi and Ehernberg (1975), the basic structure of Meltzer-Richard was completed by modeling religion as the intensity of satisfaction from charitable donations for public goods. It was developed in which the more religious people are, the greater the satisfaction they receive from voluntary donation. Thus, the political process has led to a reduction in the size of government in more religious countries, meaning lower levels of spending on public goods and redistribution, and tax-based redistributions have shaped income distribution, which means more income inequality in more religious countries. The " belief in an after- life " index was considered a measure of religiosity and the Gini coefficient was considered a measure of income inequality. Finally,the GMM, FMIL and (2ls) IV econometric models have been used to estimate the patterns over a period of 15 years (2005 - 2019). The results showed: a ) There is a positive correlation between religiosity, being and income inequality. b ) The coefficient of variable belief in an after- life in all regression models with the presence and absence of control variable is positive and significant. This means that countries with higher levels of belief in the afterlife have more inequality. c ) The coefficient of variable GDP per capita is negative and significant in all patterns and shows that countries with higher per capita incomes tend to distribute income more evenly. Perhaps the inherent priority of religion, smaller government, and lower welfare spending in more religious countries is only a reflection of the broader perspective of research.
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