Beyond America? Cross-national Contexts and Religious versus Secular Membership Effects on Self-rated Health

• In Event: 480 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 08. Social Relations and Health

Abstract

Organizational involvement and health are often positively associated, but some studies based on U.S. data suggest religious organizational involvement to be more beneficial for health than secular organizational involvement. Extending beyond America, we assess the relative impacts of religious and secular organizational involvement on self-rated health cross-nationally, accounting for national-level religious context. Analyses of data from 31 predominantly Christian countries from the 2005-2008 World Values Survey reveal that active, religious organizational membership is positively associated with self-rated health overall, although not in each country. The association’s magnitude is higher than the magnitude of positive associations between organizational membership in secular organizations (excepting recreational organizations) and self-rated health. Analyzing two national-level contextual factors, we find that the connection between religious organizational involvement and self-rated health is not related to national levels of religiosity but is related to religious pluralism. The relationship between religious organizational membership and self-rated health is stronger where Christians are more evenly distributed between Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox affiliations. In countries with high religious pluralism, religious organizational involvement predicts self-rated health as strongly as recreational organization involvement. Thus, national religious context partially explains why religious organizational members may experience better self-rated health than do members of many secular organizations.

Authors

• Laura Upenieks, University of Toronto

• Steven Larrimore Foy, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley