Do Confidence in religious institutions and Single-parent households go together across countries?

Across 89 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.25, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.29.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

There are not enough years of data within countries to check this over time.

Does Confidence in religious institutions cause Single-parent households?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Confidence in religious institutions vs. Single-parent households

Holds up after adjusting for income

A country is not a person. Countries where more people are counted as belonging to this group also tend to differ on the other measure, and that is all. It does not follow that the people in the group are the people with the different score. Making that leap is called the ecological fallacy: reading a pattern across places as a fact about individual people. It is the most common misuse of this kind of data. Religion also varies strongly with region, history and national income, so much of what looks religious here is really those. That is what the adjusted figures are for. The religion shares are estimates for two years only, and the survey questions are asked in rounds that can be ten years apart.

Across 89 countries, Confidence in religious institutions and Single-parent households rise and fall together at r = -0.25 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.31, q = 0.016, allowing for the many pairs tested).

Comparing countries across the middle half of confidence in religious institutions, 49% to 77% of respondents, single-parent households is 1.13% of households lower at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 1.6% of households.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.252p = 0.017 · 89 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.312p = 0.003 · likely range [-0.49, -0.11]

p, allowing for regions0.001standard error 0.048 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.016across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Confidence in religious institutions · % of respondentslink with income -0.57 · moderate

Single-parent households · % of householdslink with income +0.03 · independent

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.252	0.017	89
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.288	0.006	89
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.312	0.003	89
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.316	0.003	89

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 89 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: -0.060 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.343 (without PRI) to -0.267 (without QAT). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: QAT (+0.045).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	13	-0.38
Europe & Central Asia	39	-0.25

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	30	-0.38
Middle third	29	-0.20
Richest third	30	-0.22

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	54	-0.23
Muslims	22	-0.12

By last european coloniser

	n	r
United Kingdom	21	-0.46

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.260 after dropping 6 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 0years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Not enough history inside each country to look at this over time. That needs countries measured for several years in a row, and at least one of these measures is measured too rarely.

The data

	% of respondents	% of households	Years
Bangladesh BGD	99.8%	5.95%	2022, 2019
Indonesia IDN	98.3%	5.64%	2022, 2017
Pakistan PAK	97.2%	6.43%	2022, 2013
Ethiopia ETH	92.2%	9.05%	2022, 2019
Philippines PHL	92.2%	7.93%	2022, 2017
Mali MLI	90%	8.23%	2010, 2018
Viet Nam VNM	89.3%	7.25%	2022, 2020
Ghana GHA	89.3%	13.4%	2014, 2019
India IND	89.1%	7.22%	2022, 2020
Nigeria NGA	88.2%	9.3%	2022, 2018
Kosovo XKX	86.7%	5.6%	2010, 2019
Zambia ZMB	86.3%	9.64%	2010, 2018
Qatar QAT	86.2%	1.45%	2014, 2012
Myanmar MMR	84.1%	8.52%	2022, 2016
Montenegro MNE	79.6%	8.36%	2022, 2018

Haerpfer, C. et al., World Values Survey; EVS, European Values Study
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). Database on Household Size and Composition 2022.

Sources

Confidence in religious institutions

Share with confidence in churches and religious organisations

World Values Survey Association and European Values Study · via Our World in Data · Free for non-commercial use with attribution · updated irregular (survey waves, roughly every 5 years)

"A great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence, as against "not very much" or "none". Confidence in an institution is not belief in what it teaches. The gap between this and the importance of religion shows how far religious people trust their clergy. No "better" direction is set.

Single-parent households

Share of single-parent households

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division · via Our World in Data · CC BY 3.0 IGO · updated irregular (2017, 2019 and 2022 editions)

Households made up of one parent and that parent's children, of any age, and nobody else. A lone parent living with the grandparents is counted as an extended family instead. So this understates single parenthood most where several generations live together. It is the one worldwide series: about 180 countries, but each with only one to three readings. The readings are gathered from household surveys (DHS and MICS), census records and UN Demographic Yearbook tables, which sort households differently. So a jump within a country is as likely to be a change of source as a change in families. Few readings come after 2019. No "better" direction is set: it describes how people live, not a score.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2022. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Confidence in religious institutions and Single-parent households

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Confidence in religious institutions changes Single-parent households, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.