Frequent prayer vs. Suicide rate
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 75 countries, Frequent prayer and Suicide rate rise and fall together at r = -0.59 (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 = -0.46, q = 0.010, allowing for the many pairs tested).
Comparing countries across the middle half of frequent prayer, 32.7% to 83.1% of respondents, suicide rate is better by 6.65 per 100,000 at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 6.16 per 100,000.
Link before adjusting (r)-0.587p = 3.1e-8 · 75 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.463p = 3.3e-5 · likely range [-0.63, -0.26]
p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.061 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.010across 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.
Frequent prayer · % of respondentslink with income -0.68 · high
Suicide rate · per 100,000link with income +0.23 · 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 | -0.587 | 3.1e-8 | 75 |
| By rank (Spearman), not adjusted | -0.582 | 4.3e-8 | 75 |
| Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income | -0.463 | 3.3e-5 | 75 |
| By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income | -0.393 | 0.001 | 75 |
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 75 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: +0.124 (a minus sign means it grew).
How solid is it?
Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.514 (without AZE) to -0.435 (without MNG). 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: AZE (-0.051).
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 | -0.60 | |
| Europe & Central Asia | 25 | -0.51 | |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 14 | -0.27 |
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 | 25 | -0.14 | |
| Middle third | 25 | -0.43 | |
| Richest third | 25 | -0.63 |
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 | 40 | -0.43 | |
| Muslims | 22 | -0.33 |
By last european coloniser
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 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Never a European colony | 15 | -0.40 | |
| Spain | 12 | -0.27 | |
| United Kingdom | 22 | -0.32 |
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 = -0.454 after dropping 1 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 | per 100,000 | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nigeria NGA | 98.4% | 4.99 | 2022, 2021 |
| Libya LBY | 97.6% | 5 | 2022, 2021 |
| Trinidad and Tobago TTO | 96.8% | 13.3 | 2014, 2021 |
| Egypt, Arab Rep. EGY | 96.6% | 0.63 | 2022, 2021 |
| Ghana GHA | 95.5% | 5.32 | 2014, 2021 |
| Haiti HTI | 95.4% | 7.81 | 2014, 2021 |
| Indonesia IDN | 95.3% | 1.2 | 2022, 2021 |
| Ethiopia ETH | 94.9% | 6.07 | 2022, 2021 |
| Zimbabwe ZWE | 94.2% | 17.3 | 2022, 2021 |
| Maldives MDV | 93.5% | 1.47 | 2022, 2021 |
| Kenya KEN | 93.3% | 4.58 | 2022, 2021 |
| Philippines PHL | 92.4% | 3.49 | 2022, 2021 |
| West Bank and Gaza PSE | 90.5% | 0.65 | 2014, 2021 |
| Pakistan PAK | 89.8% | 5.64 | 2022, 2021 |
| Colombia COL | 87.9% | 4.96 | 2022, 2021 |
Haerpfer, C. et al., World Values Survey; EVS, European Values Study
World Bank, World Development Indicators
Sources
Frequent prayer
Share praying at least several times a week
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)
Private practice. Attendance is public practice, and importance is belief. The three can differ: a country can pray often and attend rarely. Asked only from the 2014 wave on, so it covers about eighty countries. No "better" direction is set, for the same reason as attendance.
Suicide rate
Suicide mortality rate (per 100,000 population)
World Health Organization Global Health Observatory · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly
Estimates from a statistical model. Differences between countries partly reflect how deaths are registered, and how deaths of unclear intent are recorded. Those recording habits are linked to both religion and income.
How this was computed
Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2014–2022. 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 Frequent prayer and Suicide rate
This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Frequent prayer changes Suicide rate, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.
More links with Frequent prayer or Suicide rate
- Frequent prayer vs Religion very important before +0.91 → after adjusting +0.85
- Frequent prayer vs Religious attendance before +0.89 → after adjusting +0.81
- Frequent prayer vs Interpersonal trust before -0.75 → after adjusting -0.61
- Frequent prayer vs PISA maths before -0.76 → after adjusting -0.58
- Frequent prayer vs PISA science before -0.75 → after adjusting -0.57
- Religion very important vs Suicide rate before -0.65 → after adjusting -0.56
- Frequent prayer vs Gender Inequality Index before +0.77 → after adjusting +0.55
- PISA science vs Suicide rate before +0.60 → after adjusting +0.55