Religiousness, Religious Denomination and Satisfaction: An Asian Perspective

Abstract

The article investigates the influence of religiousness and religious denomination on life satisfaction and financial satisfaction. The first research question is whether religious people in Asia are more satisfied than non-religious ones.  It is also searched, people belonging to which religious denomination, are happier than others.  The data is obtained from the 6th wave of the World Values Survey and the responses of Asian respondents are taken into account. It is found that respondents who believe in God and take religion as important in life, express greater life and financial satisfaction. Though satisfied with life, Buddhists are less satisfied with their financial position than others.  Buddhists probably place greater weightage on non-pecuniary factors and thus feel themselves satisfied with life even though they are dissatisfied with their financial position.  Christians are less satisfied financially than people of other religious denominations. It can be concluded that respondents of different religious denominations place different emphasis on pecuniary and non-pecuniary aspects of life. People often misallocate time in favour of monetary domains at the cost of non-monetary domains such as religion. They can increase life satisfaction by withdrawing themselves from the ‘rat race’ of meeting financial aspirations and placing more emphasis on religion.