placestats

Government spending per capita vs. Religious attendance

Fades 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 41 countries, Government spending per capita and Religious attendance rise and fall together at r = -0.51 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.10, which could easily be chance (q = 0.76, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things. Caution: sign flips when a single country is removed.

Comparing countries across the middle half of religious attendance, 14.3% to 39% of respondents, government spending per capita is $8,845 lower at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is $1,112.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.511p = 0.001 · 41 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.104p = 0.522 · likely range [-0.40, +0.21]
p, allowing for regions0.595standard error 0.176 · 4 regions
Check for luck (q)0.760across 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.

Government spending per capita · current international dollarslink with income +0.92 · proxy
Religious attendance · % of respondentslink with income -0.66 · high

Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.

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

Every country as a dot

Government spending per capita · current international dollars →Religious attendance · % of respondents →$3,279$72,9576.48%77.8%Australia: $29,639, 17.5% of respondentsAustria: $41,817, 26.8% of respondentsBelgium: $40,194, 18.9% of respondentsBulgaria: $16,433, 17.3% of respondentsBrazil: $10,810, 59.6% of respondentsCanada: $29,521, 16.4% of respondentsSwitzerland: $32,409, 16.2% of respondentsChile: $9,208, 31% of respondentsColombia: $11,382, 58.3% of respondentsCzechia: $24,719, 10% of respondentsGermany: $36,555, 19.2% of respondentsDenmark: $38,309, 6.48% of respondentsSpain: $26,400, 22.8% of respondentsEstonia: $22,116, 8% of respondentsFinland: $37,614, 11.1% of respondentsFrance: $35,798, 12.4% of respondentsUnited Kingdom: $29,093, 16.1% of respondentsGreece: $21,055, 44.5% of respondentsCroatia: $23,743, 33.7% of respondentsHungary: $22,871, 17.3% of respondentsIndonesia: $3,279, 77.8% of respondentsIreland: $31,581, 53.3% of respondentsIceland: $39,385, 8.48% of respondentsItaly: $31,377, 40.7% of respondentsJapan: $20,594, 12.3% of respondentsKorea, Rep.: $21,401, 22.8% of respondentsLithuania: $21,954, 30% of respondentsLuxembourg: $72,957, 22.7% of respondentsLatvia: $19,891, 12.8% of respondentsMexico: $7,585, 60.6% of respondentsNetherlands: $37,878, 14.3% of respondentsNorway: $50,329, 11.8% of respondentsNew Zealand: $23,949, 16.8% of respondentsPoland: $24,692, 64.3% of respondentsPortugal: $22,321, 29.7% of respondentsRomania: $21,349, 46% of respondentsSlovak Republic: $22,559, 36.1% of respondentsSlovenia: $26,764, 23.8% of respondentsSweden: $35,854, 9.65% of respondentsTurkiye: $10,287, 39.5% of respondentsUnited States: $34,073, 39% of respondentsBGRBRADNKESTIDNIRLLUXLVAMEXNORPOL

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted-0.5110.00141
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted-0.4940.00141
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income-0.1040.52241
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.1810.26541

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 41 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: +0.407 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.263 (without LUX) to +0.223 (without IRL). 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: IRL (+0.327).

Fragile: this link may not hold up.
  • sign flips when a single country is removed
  • leave-one-out range spans 0.49 in r
  • correlation moves sharply once outliers are trimmed

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.

nr
Europe & Central Asia30-0.36

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.

nr
Poorest third14-0.01
Middle third13+0.05
Richest third14-0.52

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.

nr
Christians34-0.20

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 = -0.287 after dropping 2 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


current international dollars
% of respondents		Years
Luxembourg LUX$72,95722.7%2024, 2010
Norway NOR$50,32911.8%2024, 2022
Austria AUT$41,81726.8%2024, 2022
Belgium BEL$40,19418.9%2024, 2010
Iceland ISL$39,3858.48%2024, 2022
Denmark DNK$38,3096.48%2024, 2022
Netherlands NLD$37,87814.3%2024, 2022
Finland FIN$37,61411.1%2024, 2022
Germany DEU$36,55519.2%2024, 2022
Sweden SWE$35,8549.65%2024, 2022
France FRA$35,79812.4%2024, 2022
United States USA$34,07339%2024, 2022
Switzerland CHE$32,40916.2%2024, 2022
Ireland IRL$31,58153.3%2024, 2010
Italy ITA$31,37740.7%2024, 2022

OECD databases as named on each indicator: PISA, Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), Income Distribution Database, Development Assistance Committee statistics, Family Database, Government at a Glance, Corporate Tax Statistics, employment and environment statistics
Haerpfer, C. et al., World Values Survey; EVS, European Values Study

Sources

Government spending per capita

General government expenditure per capita

OECD · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 (OECD terms and conditions) · updated annual, except the snapshots noted per indicator

All levels of government, in current dollars adjusted for what money buys in each country (purchasing power). So it grows over time with inflation as well as differing across countries. Where it is used for adjusting, it is measured in percentage terms (on a log scale), like income. Compared with national income, this measure answers a question nobody is asking. It is money per person set against money per person. So it moves with GDP per capita at about +0.86. Its development loading, which shows how much a measure just reflects how developed a country is, is +0.92. Rich countries spend far more per person because they have far more per person, and almost all of that figure comes from dividing by people. To ask whether government is a larger part of what a country has, you need a share of GDP, not an amount per head. Three measures here do that: government consumption, government expense and tax revenue. Against income those run +0.12, +0.29 and +0.32. That is a much smaller answer, and the real one.

Religious attendance

Share attending religious services frequently

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)

The share who attend religious services at least once a month. This measures taking part, not belief or belonging to a religion. Those are three different things, and they can differ sharply. A country can be almost entirely religious by belonging and yet rarely attend anything. No "better" direction is set, and none could be defended. Attendance describes how people live. It does not show whether a country is doing well, and calling either end the good one would be a claim this site has no basis for. The survey runs in waves, not every year, so data for each country are sparse and uneven.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2024. 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 4 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 Government spending per capita and Religious attendance

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Government spending per capita changes Religious attendance, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Government spending per capita or Religious attendance