Open AccessReligiosity and Income among Muslims: A Baseline-Study from Malaysia
Author(s) -
Makmor Bin Tumin,
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Ahmad Farid Osman,
Nawi Abdullah,
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Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of social science and humanities
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2600-9056
DOI - 10.26666/rmp.jssh.2021.4.2
Subject(s) - religiosity , multivariate statistics , psychology , association (psychology) , empirical research , baseline (sea) , social psychology , demography , demographic economics , sociology , economics , political science , mathematics , statistics , law , psychotherapist
Several theories and empirical studies have established a negative association between income and religiosity, whereby increased income has been associated with decreased religiosity. The bulk of previous empirical studies which were based on data from the Pew Research Centre have been country-level analyses with only a few Muslim-majority countries included. This baseline study provides a preliminary examination of the relationship between income and religiosity at the individual level among Muslim populations. The study utilizes data collected using a self-administrated questionnaire distributed online in June 2020. The multivariate OLS regressions demonstrate that, at the individual level and among Muslims, the association between religiosity and income is not linear, but quadratic. An increase in income is associated with a decline in religiosity up to a turning point, where the increase in income is associated with increased religiosity, forming a U-shaped relationship.