Att religion påverkar såväl ekonomi som politik är inte någon nyhet. En ny studie, ”Religion, Income Inequality, and the Size of Government”, antyder att denna påverkan kan vara av ett slag som kan glädja marknadsliberaler. Deras teoretiska resonemang kan uttryckas så här:

The role of religion in influencing people’s giving attitudes has an important politico-economic implication: Keeping all else equal, religious individuals would prefer to make their financial contributions to collective goods privately and voluntarily rather than through mandatory means. As such, when compared with secular individuals, religious individuals on average are likely to prefer lower levels of spending by the state (be it on public goods or redistribution), as this increases their disposable income out of which voluntary donations are to be made. If policy outcomes reflect variation in citizen preferences, then we can also expect countries with higher levels of religiosity to have lower levels of government taxation and spending. Put differently, we can expect the size of the government to be smaller in countries with higher levels of religiosity.

Empiriskt finner de följande:

[W]e find that there is a significant positive correlation between religiosity and income inequality across a wide spectrum of countries including both advanced and less advanced countries. We next show that there is a negative correlation between religiosity and state welfare spending … However, we go beyond these studies and show that a negative correlation is also present between religiosity and total government spending as well as between religiosity and government spending excluding spending on welfare. This finding suggests that the religious might have an inherent preference for a smaller state and that a smaller welfare spending observed in more religious countries documented by these studies is just a manifestation of this more general outlook.

Således föreligger ett dilemma för en liberal ateist (det finns fler!), medan en liberal socialist mer enkelt kan avvisa religionen som negativ även på det ekonomisk-politiska området. Detta resultat kan för övrigt relateras till ekonomipristagaren James Buchanans uppfattning, att religionens nedgång kan bidra till att förklara efterfrågan på en stor välfärdsstat. Utan en trygg gud som tar hand om dem, vänder sig människor till staten.