Religion and Happiness:

Today's post will explore the relationship between religious practice and improved health. There is overwhelming evidence that people who are religious live longer, happier and healthier lives than their secular counterparts:

ANALYSIS OF STUDIES SHOWS THAT RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT MAY BE A FACTOR IN LIVING A LONG LIFE- Forty-Two Studies, Nearly 126,000 People Were Examined

Washington - Nearly 96 percent of Americans believe in God or in some universal spirit, according to a 1995 Gallup poll. Maybe people are more health conscious than previously thought. Regular attendance at one's church, synagogue, mosque or Buddhist monastery is related to longer life, according to a meta-analysis of 42 studies that examined 125,826 people which is reported in the current issue of Health Psychology published by the American Psychological Association (APA). "The odds of survival for people who scored higher on measures of public and private religious involvement were 29 percent higher than those people who scored lower on such measures," said psychologist and lead author Michael E. McCullough, Ph.D., of the National Institute for Healthcare Research. Public religious involvement is defined by how frequently a person attends church or temple, whether a person is a member of a religious organization (a religious kibbutz) or how much spare time a person spends in church or temple activities. Private religious involvement includes measures such as self-rated religiousness, frequency of private prayer and use of religion as a coping resource. Follow-up results indicated that involvement in public religious activity was particularly important in predicting mortality, according to the study. This held true for nearly all the studies individually but was certainly true for the entire group of studies as a whole.. "Moreover, results seemed to indicate that those people with a high level of religious involvement were also less obese. Read about it here.

Another study reported by the BBC detailed the relationship between religious people and happiness. Specifically:

Religious people are better able to cope with shocks such as losing a job or divorce, claims the study presented to a Royal Economic Society conference. Data from thousands of Europeans revealed higher levels of "life satisfaction" in believers. However, researcher Professor Andrew Clark said other aspects of a religious upbringing unrelated to belief may influence future happiness. It is not the first study to draw links between religion and happiness, with a belief among many psychologists that some factor in either belief, or its observance, offering benefits.Professor Clark, from the Paris School of Economics, and co-author Dr Orsolya Lelkes from the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, used information from household surveys to analyse the attitudes of Christians - both Catholic and Protestant - not only to their own happiness, but also to issues such as unemployment. Their findings, they said, suggested that religion could offer a "buffer" which protected from life's disappointments. Professor Clark said: "We originally started the research to work out why some European countries had more generous unemployment benefits than others, but our analysis suggested that religious people suffered less psychological harm from unemployment than the non-religious. "They had higher levels of life satisfaction". Read about it here.

Finally this link details over 25 separate studies detailing the practice of religious activity improves health and increases longevity. Read it here.