Inequality and Religiosity in a Global Context: Different Secularization Paths for Developed and Developing Nations

Drawing on data from the World Values Survey (1995-2014), and using a multilevel modeling technique, this article explores the relationship between social inequalities and religiosity for a sample of 223,016 respondents nested in 85 countries. Mixed-effects regression models find that income inequality is a stronger determinant of individuals' religiosity in developing (lower middle-income) countries compared to developed (higher middle-income and high-income) nations. Alternatively, healthcare inequality, operationalized as the out-of-pocket share of a country's total health-related expenditures, is a stronger predictor of individual-level religiosity in high-income countries, relative to both upper and lower middle-income nations. These findings broaden our understanding of the global religious dynamics through discovering a cross-national heterogeneity in paths through which the process of secularization works in developed and developing nations.