Blessed Are The Downtrodden? An Empirical Test

Abstract

Deprivation theory of religious commitment has relied traditionally upon status measures of deprivation: age, sex, income, education, race. Measures of religiosity and status indicators, however, have never been combined with subjective measures of felt deprivation. A recent major national quality of life survey fills this gap by providing a cluster of felt deprivation measures. The data enable us to ask if religiosity cushions the effects of negative feelings of well-being among the “objectively” deprived. Results suggest religiosity, as measured by survey indicators, has little effect in this regard, a finding which raises questions concerning traditional formulations of functional definitions as well as the adequacy of religiosity and quality of life measures.