As a prelude to our analysis of the effects of religion on economic growth, we
estimated panel systems in which the dependent variables are country averages of
answers to survey questions about attendance at religious services and religious beliefs.
The explanatory variables include a set of country-wide factors: economic and
demographic variables, government policies and institutions related to religion, the
country’s composition of adherence to the major religions, and the measure of religious
pluralism, which is constructed from the data on adherence.