Skip to main content
Sojourners
faith in action for social justice
Sojourners
About
About SojournersEventsOur TeamWork With UsMediaWays to GiveInvite a SpeakerContact Us
SojoAction
OverviewTake ActionIssue AreasResourcesFaith-Rooted AdvocatesChurch Engagement
Magazine
Current IssueArchivesManage My SubscriptionWrite for Sojourners
Sections
LatestPoliticsColumnsLiving FaithArts & CultureGlobalPodcastsVideoPreaching The Word
Subscribe
MagazineRenewPreaching the WordCustomer ServiceNewsletters
Donate
Login / Register

Study: Protestant Work Ethic Isn't Just Protestant Anymore

By Kimberly Winston
Work ethic graphic created via wordle.net. Via RNS.
Mar 7, 2014
Share

America’s vaunted Protestant work ethic is getting a makeover: Now it might be more of an atheist work ethic.

A new study has found an inverse relationship between the religiosity of a state’s population and its “productive entrepreneurship.” That’s professor-speak for “entrepreneurial investment responsible for real economic growth.”

In other words, the less religious a state’s population, the more likely it is to have a healthy economy.

The study, titled “Religion: Productive or Unproductive?” by economists Travis Wiseman of Mississippi State University and Andrew Young of West Virginia University, was published in the March edition of the Journal of Institutional Economics.

In the study, Wiseman and Young find that the “measure of total Christian adherents is robustly and positively correlated with states’ unproductive entrepreneurship scores” in a given state.

“This could be because religion imposes opportunity costs in terms of time and resources that may otherwise have been devoted toward productive entrepreneurship,” they write. “For example, time spent in church reduces time available for engaging in business activity. More subjectively, religion may create psychic costs to pursuing worldly gains rather than salvation in the beyond.”

On the flip side, they find that the percentage of a state’s atheists or agnostics is “positively and significantly related to productive entrepreneurship” within that state.

“One possibility is that productive entrepreneurial activities are largely substitutes for religious ones,” Wiseman and Young suggest.

The study, which stemmed from Wiseman’s doctoral dissertation and is part of a larger work on entrepreneurial practices, relied on data from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s Religious Landscape Survey of 2007, Gallup’s State of the States surveys of 2004 and 2008, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Religious Congregations and Membership studies of 2000 and 2010 .

The authors do not, however, rank individual states according to their score. In separate studies, Gallup has ranked Mississippi, Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, and South Carolina as the five most religious states; Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Oregon were the five least religious states.

The authors examined the religious affiliation of each state’s population, as well as their level of religiosity based on four factors — attendance at religious services, belief in God, prayer, and the level of importance placed on religion.

Kimberly Winston writes for Religion News Service. Via RNS.

Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!

Tell Us What You Think!

We value your feedback on the articles we post. Please fill out the form below, and a member of our online publication team will receive your message. By submitting this form, you consent to your comment being featured in our Letters section. 

Please do not include any non-text characters, such as emojis or other non-standard content, into your submission.  It may cause errors in submitting the form.  Thanks!

Don't Miss a Story!

Sojourners is committed to faith and justice even in polarized times. Will you join us on the journey?
Confirm Your Email Address.
By entering your email we'll send you our newsletter each Thursday. You can unsubscribe anytime.
Work ethic graphic created via wordle.net. Via RNS.
Search Sojourners

Subscribe

Magazine Newsletters Preaching The Word
Follow on Facebook Follow on Bluesky Follow on Instagram Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Sojourners
Donate Products Editorial Policies Privacy Policy

Media

Advertising Press

Opportunities

Careers Fellowship Program

Contact

Office
408 C St. NE
Washington DC, 20002
Phone 202-328-8842
Fax 202-328-8757
Email sojourners@sojo.net
Unless otherwise noted, all material © Sojourners 2025