Researching Spiritual Capital: Promises and Pitfalls

In the United States, highly religious people tend to live longer, have fewer health and mental problems, steal less, volunteer more time, and give away more money than others. Even when other relevant factors are controlled for statistically, these differences persist. Moreover, in many cases the religiosity of the community influences these factors as much as the religiosity of individuals. Thus, there seems to be a communal product which goes beyond individual religiosity. All the factors listed above presumably influence the economy. To the extent people’s religious commitments cause these differences, we can view religion as a resource which social scientists should account for in their economic models. Just as scholars have used the concepts of “human capital,” “social capital,” and “cultural capital”—perhaps we can add the concept “spiritual capital.” We can define this as resources that are created or people have access to when people invest in religion as religion.