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Religion and inequality: the lasting impact of religious traditions and institutions on welfare state development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2014

Jason Jordan
Jason Jordan*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor,Department of Political Science, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey, USA
*
*E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

A strong correlation exists between inequality and religion, such that societies marked by high inequality are more religious than those with more egalitarian income distributions. What explains this correlation? Insecurity theory argues that high inequality generates intense insecurities, leading the poor to seek shelter in religion for both psychological and material comfort. This article develops an alternative perspective that reverses the chain of causality. It argues that religious institutions and movements frequently resist both the centralization of state power and socialist efforts to organize the working class. As a result, powerful religious movements constrain state-led efforts to provide social protection, increasing income inequality. Analysis of the historical record and contemporary data from 19 Western democracies reveals strong evidence that past periods of church-state conflict shaped the size and structure of welfare state institutions and, by extension, contemporary patterns of inequality.

Keywords

religioninequalitywelfare stateinsecurity theory
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 25 - 48
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2014 

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