The Bicausal Relation between Religion and Income

In this paper the relation between religion and income is investigated using a micro-dataset for the Netherlands. Religiosity is measured by religious membership and by participation. Instead of estimating separately a religion and an income equation, joint regression is preferred since this generally yields more efficient estimates. Following the single equation approach, both religious measures are found to decrease significantly income and income is found to affect negatively religion. However, these cross-effects get insignificant once the equations are simultaneously estimated. In contrast, the effects of socio-economic characteristics on religion and income hardly differ between both approaches.