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How Does Religion Affect Your Wallet?

How Does Religion Affect Your Wallet?
RAFAEL GONZALEZ is licensed under CC BY 2.0
New Study Shows the Religious Factors Affecting Individual Wealth

A church’s tactic of asking for money could be causing some individuals to leave. A new study published is demonstrating the effect of religion on personal income. The study was published by LendEDU and surveyed 1,000 participants who identified as either Jewish, Christian, or Muslim.

How Does Religion Affect Your Wallet?[/tweetthis]

Over one-third of participants said they had been pressured to donate to their religions. Twenty percent have considered leaving their faith because of the high demands of donating money. When focusing on millennials that number increases. Nearly 1 in 4 millennials stated they have distanced themselves from their religion because of the financial costs.

So how much does it cost to have faith? The average amount was about $1,200 with the lowest amount paid by Christians (around $800). Most of this money went to either assisting others or community events. The third biggest category was paying for religious leaders in their organizations. It is unclear how the respondents defined what was being paid for, but it does demonstrate that religions do provide a background for charitable works and as a community organization for citizens.

Over one million dollars was given by the 1,000 people surveyed last year. But that is just a drop in the bucket for religions. A Georgetown study pointed out that faith is bigger than Amazon, Apple, and Google, with a net worth of 1.2 trillion dollars. Religious organizations receive tax breaks from the U.S. government that is estimated at 83.5 billion dollars. That is enough money to send a rover to Mars every 2 weeks.

This was not the reason why people limited their donations. Equal numbers from each religion put not enough funds as the key reason why they were not able to pay more. It remains to be seen how this information will influence individual spending habits.

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