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Insuring Consumption and Happiness Through Religious Organizations

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Author Info
Rajeev Dehejia
Thomas DeLeire
Erzo F.P. Luttmer

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Abstract

This paper examines whether involvement with religious organizations insures an individual's stream of consumption and of happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), we examine whether households who contribute to a religious organization are able to insure their consumption stream against income shocks and find strong insurance effects for whites. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we examine whether individuals who attend religious services are able to insure their stream of happiness against income shocks and find strong happiness insurance effects for blacks but smaller effects for whites. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that religion provides an alternative form of insurance for both whites and blacks though the mechanism by which religious organizations provide insurance to each of these groups appears to be different.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 11576.

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Date of creation: Aug 2005
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11576

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - General
Z12 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Religion

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Richard B. Freeman, 1986. "Who Escapes? The Relation of Churchgoing and Other Background Factors to the Socioeconomic Performance of Black Male Youths from Inner-City Tracts," NBER Chapters, in: The Black Youth Employment Crisis, pages 353-376 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Gruber, Jonathan, 2004. "Pay or pray? The impact of charitable subsidies on religious attendance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2635-2655, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. Jonathan Gruber, 2004. "Pay or Pray? The Impact of Charitable Subsidies on Religious Attendance," NBER Working Papers 10374, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  18. Deaton, Angus, 1992. " Household Saving in LDCs: Credit Markets, Insurance and Welfare," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 94(2), pages 253-73.
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  20. Robert MacCulloch & Silvia Pezzini, 2002. "The Role of Freedom, Growth and Religion in the Taste for Revolution," STICERD - Development Economics Papers 36, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE. [Downloadable!]
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  30. Jonathan Gruber & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2002. "Do Cigarette Taxes Make Smokers Happier?," NBER Working Papers 8872, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Lynne Pepall & Daniel Richards & John Straub & Michael DeBartolo, 2006. "Competition and Civic Engagement in the Religious Marketplace," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0603, Department of Economics, Tufts University. [Downloadable!]
  2. Lehrer, Evelyn L., 2008. "The Role of Religion in Economic and Demographic Behavior in the United States: A Review of the Recent Literature," IZA Discussion Papers 3541, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  3. Andrew E. Clark & Orsolya Lelkes, 2005. "Deliver us from evil: religion as insurance," PSE Working Papers 2005-43, PSE (Ecole normale supérieure). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Simon Fan, C., 2008. "Religious participation and children's education: A social capital approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 303-317, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. S. Brock Blomberg & Thomas DeLeire & Gregory D. Hess, 2006. "The (After) Life-Cycle Theory of Religious Contributions," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
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