The data reveal an overall pattern in which economic development is associated
with less religiosity, measured by church attendance or religious beliefs. This pattern can
be seen in simple relations between a measure of religiosity and per capita GDP, which
we take as the basic indicator of economic development. As examples, negative
associations with the log of per capita GDP appear for monthly church attendance in
Figure 1, for belief in heaven in Figure 2, and for belief in hell in Figure 3. The simple
correlations with the log of per capita GDP are -0.51 for the monthly-church-attendance
variable, -0.48 for the belief-in-heaven variable, and -0.51 for the belief-in-hell variable.