Non-Technical Summary:
There is considerable empirical evidence to indicate that the behavioral outcomes of people who hold religious beliefs are different from those who do not. Individuals who tend to score higher on measures of religiosity also tend to score better in a breadth of outcomes such as health and other measures of objective and subjective well-being. The majority of these statistical associations is true for both males and females, and for both adults and adolescents. To the extent that being religious or having personality traits associated with religiosity can generate these outcomes, cultivating these traits can be viewed as a powerful social and personal instrument to influence peoples’ lives toward achieving better life outcomes.
Our objective is to estimate the impact of religiosity on teenage propensity to engage in risky health behaviors using a variety of estimation methods. We study the effect of the importance of religion in daily life on the risk of youths, ages 14–17, (i) having first sexual intercourse at a young age, (ii) trying alcohol, (iii) drinking alcohol at least once a month, (iv) trying cigarettes, (v) trying cannabis, and (vi) being involved in fighting.
Our results show that the individual propensity to engage in risky behaviors strongly decreases when individuals show both high levels of religiosity and strong work ethic. Low self-esteem also seems to play an important role in increasing the chances of engaging in early sexual intercourse, smoking, and drinking. The results are similar for boys and girls, and they are stable across several empirical specifications of the model. These results indicate that there is potential scope to introduce policies that would encourage a better work ethic. They also imply that there needs to be a deeper understanding of how beliefs in the supernatural generate these positive outcomes.
From a policy perspective, there is a potential to focus on positive changes in personality traits (especially work ethic and self-esteem). Educational and religious institutions may also engage in collaborative activities to reduce the probability that adolescents engage in what may be characterized as unsound practices such as underage consumption of alcohol and tobacco. In recent years, social policies in several countries have started to consider personality traits, emotions, and positive behaviors. The evaluations of these programs have shown substantial benefits and improvements in non-cognitive skills. We believe that such programs could benefit their target populations even more if they can, where feasible, collaborate with religious institutions, particularly when the goal is to reduce the burden arising out of risky health behaviors in adolescence.
One may also consider extracting what is essential in religion that creates these positive behavioral outcomes, and form policies around that for a far greater scope which includes adolescents or families who do not profess a religious belief. For instance, having religious beliefs may impact on one’s “goal selection, goal pursuit, and goal management” or that it may influence abilities for self-monitoring and self-regulation. These skills do not necessarily have to derive from divine revelation, but could form part of a wider foundation on secular morality. In this way, the scope for policy instruments is not limited to those that may be wielded by members and leaders of religious organizations, and it would be more cognizant of and responsive to the increasing secularization of the developed (and large parts of the developing) world.